


Breathe You In

by Euphorion



Series: Polyamory [5]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Blow Jobs, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Photography, Pining, Polyamory, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>So maybe unlike previous crushes Kasamatsu had a hard time putting him out of his head, maybe he spent a little too long on his walk home thinking about the easy way Kise had let him pull him close, but he was allowed—Kise was his star player, and as captain he had to think about him. Strategically.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He stared at his bedroom ceiling. Who the fuck had golden eyes, anyway?</i>
</p><p>+</p><p>Many of you wanted more for Kise, so. Here is more for Kise.</p><p>This is a part of the larger Polyamory 'verse, and while as always you don't have to read all of the other fics, for this I would recommend reading <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3306077">A Brother in Arms</a> to get Kise's side of what's happening for some of this fic. Or maybe read this and then that! All of these pieces are nonlinear, I'm not here to tell you what to do.</p><p>As always, title is Anais Mitchell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kise swung himself around his defender like a dancer on a wire, effortless, his shoes barely touching the floor. His shot hooked lazily into the net and Kasamatsu felt a fierce stab of pride—that wasn’t a shot Kise would have been able to make a month ago, but now it looked as natural as breathing. When Kise turned to look at him, his long fingers swiping sweat-damp hair out of eyes that gleamed smug gold, the pride shifted, just a little, into something else.

He shook it off, giving him a nod and spinning on his heel, dashing across court to his mark. He’d always crushed easy; people were annoying and disappointing and self-obsessed but they could also be pretty incredible, and Kasamatsu had crafted himself a kind of grouchy wall in order to keep his appreciation for them secret. He’d never felt the need to act on any of his crushes—he didn’t really have time, and didn’t relish the idea of making himself that vulnerable, either to their ridicule or their rejection. He was just a boy who could privately appreciate other boys, that was all.

This thing with Kise was no different. He hadn’t been surprised, the first time he caught himself staring as Kise pulled his shirt off over his head, gaze caught by the (objectively impressive!) shift of muscles in his back, the first time he felt his heart pick up when Kise smiled at him, his genuine smile, not his paparazzi one. If anything he was kind of disgusted with himself for his lack of originality. Of course he was going to develop a crush on the member of the Generation of Miracles who happened to be a _model_. It was depressing, like he’d put himself in the ranks of those screaming girls on the sidelines.

His mark caught a pass, his hands a little too loose around the ball, and Kasamatsu saw a flash of gold out of the corner of his eye and shifted sideways. He swept out a hand, scooping the ball away from his mark and sent it bouncing sharp behind him. He heard the smack of it hitting Kise’s hands before he turned around, and by the time he had, Kise was halfway down the court already.

They won by 30 points and Kasamatsu pulled Kise into a hug without letting himself think about it too much. Kise’s palm slid up his back, surprised and hesitant, and then Kasamatsu let him go, his heart pounding.

“Good job,” he muttered to Kise’s shoes, and then went to take his place in line.

This was no different. This was no problem at all.

+

It was—maybe a little bit different.

Usually when he had a crush it was mostly aesthetic—he found himself watching someone when they were around, but it was always easy to put them out of his mind when they weren’t. He always had basketball to think about, after all, but now Kise kind of _was_ basketball—not out of any choice or sentimentality but out of necessity; Kasamatsu had rearranged his team and frankly his life around having him as a player. His presence, his talent, absolutely demanded it, and so long as he was willing to live up to the efforts of his teammates Kasamatsu didn’t begrudge him. He deserved it.

And that was the problem—he _deserved_ it, deserved the respect of his teammates and the love of his fans, not just through his skill but as a person. He was—good, that was the word Kasamatsu always returned to, and it seemed such a weak one, like calling someone “nice”, damning him with faint praise. But Kasamatsu didn’t really think there was anyone that was good like Kise was good, good with a capital G. He was kind and he was supportive and he was attentive—when you were talking to him it was like his whole world narrowed to be you and nothing but. And yeah, he could be arrogant and lazy and flippant and he pissed Kasamatsu off more than anyone else in the world but none of that changed his essential nature.

So maybe unlike previous crushes Kasamatsu had a hard time putting him out of his head, maybe he spent a little too long on his walk home thinking about the easy way Kise had let him pull him close, but he was allowed—Kise was his star player, and as captain he had to think about him. Strategically.

He stared at his bedroom ceiling. Who the _fuck_ had golden eyes, anyway?

+

“Kise~~~!!!”

Kasamatsu’s eyebrows twitched together. This was ridiculous. It was just a practice game, and they weren’t at home—how had these girls even known to come here? Now he would have to deal with Kise being an absolute peacock about it, preening and shooting them glances between plays, and that wasn’t a distraction they could afford, today.

Not with Midorima and his stupid psychic boyfriend dominating the court like this. Kasamatsu had slipped up in his tactics by treating Midorima as a single threat, because the coordination between him and Takao had gotten much, much better since the last time he’d seen them play. The plan shifted from “don’t let Midorima touch the ball” to “don’t let Midorima _or_ Takao touch the ball” because as soon as Takao got his hands on it it was as good as in the net already and he was shooting a grin at Midorima as the latter lowered his hands, glowering and satisfied.

It reminded Kasamatsu of Kagami and his little blue shadow from Seirin, only with precision in the place of pure power, and that was a terrifying thought. He would’ve said no one could even get close to that kind of synchronicity ‘til today.

He looked at Kise, expecting to see him responding to the screams of his fans, but he was staring at the floor between his feet. Kasamatsu stormed over and smacked him in the arm. “Mark up, idiot,” he snapped.

Kise glanced at him, his eyes a little distant. “Sorry,” he said, automatic, and darted away.

Kasamatsu ran to his own mark, frowning.

At halftime Kise at least gave his fans a smile and a little wave before sinking onto the bench, his arms loose on his knees like he didn’t know what to do with them. Kasamatsu blew out a sigh and jogged over to the girls on the sidelines. “Oi,” he snapped.

They looked up from giggling at each other. The tallest blinked at him. She was cute—athletic, with an open, laughing kind of face. Kasamatsu wondered briefly if she was what Kise liked, and then shook it off. “Get lost,” he said. “This is a private practice, no bystanders.”

One of the others pouted at him. “Aw,” she said, “but—“

“But nothing,” he said firmly. “Get out.”

Reluctantly they went, casting last glances Kise’s way, and when the doors had closed behind them Kasamatsu jogged back to where Kise still sat, staring at his hands. Kasamatsu kicked him lightly in the shin. “What the fuck,” he said.

Kise raised his head, blinking at him. “Senpai?”

“The hell was that?” he asked, jerking his head at the court. He meant the girls and he meant the game and Kise smiled apologetically up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know. I got distracted by my fans again. I’ll focus more in the second half.”

Kasamatsu scowled harder. Kise was lying to him and he didn’t know why and he didn’t like it. But there was something almost fragile in Kise’s face, an underlying sadness that Kasamatsu had never seen before, and though he wanted to slap him upside the head and snap _stop lying to me, asshole_ he just slid a hand into his hair, gripping a little too tight, and shook him. “You better,” he said, and backed off.

He made sure Kise had water, though, and a towel—it didn’t seem like he was sick, not with the plays he had accomplished today when he could be fucking bothered, but. Even so.

It stuck with him after they lost, that—sadness wasn’t even really the right word, because Kise often looked kind of sad for reasons Kasamatsu couldn’t understand, especially whenever he was around any of his former teammates from Teiko. But this was different, more active, somehow. This was _despair_ , and it made Kasamatsu itch to hit something.

It didn’t go away for the next two days and Kise avoided his glares and just apologized whenever Kasamatsu tried to get him to open up or let him the _fuck_ in, so he did the only thing he could think of: he followed him home.

He waited a while to knock once he knew where Kise lived so it wouldn’t be super obvious that he’d followed him, and when he did he heard a click and then the space beneath the door was flooded with light. He frowned. Had Kise just been sitting in the dark?

Kise opened his door and blinked at him, surprised. “Senpai,” he said. “Ah—come in, welcome.”

Kasamatsu gave him a nod and followed him inside, looking around at his apartment. It was huge and beautiful, if minimally decorated. Kise had magazines on his table with bookmarks in them—presumably his own photoshoots, or stuff he was looking at for inspiration. Through a shadowed doorway—none of the other lights were on—he could see a high-ceilinged kitchen. His gym bag was sitting by the door and there was a basketball in one corner. It was pretty much exactly what Kasamatsu had imagined—not that he had. Much.

From behind him, Kise asked, “What can I do for you?”

Kasamatsu shrugged, turning to look at him. He was leaning against the wall, effortlessly elegant, his eyes curious.

“You’ve been weird for a couple days,” Kasamatsu said, keeping his eyes on his face. “Thought I’d come kick the shit out of you until you get over yourself. Or you could just tell me what’s wrong.”

He thought Kise might just send him on his way—this was pretty presumptuous—and he braced himself to be politely ejected. But Kise smiled at him, warm and real, and that was much more of a relief than it had any right to be. “It’s, ah—“ he started, and then laughed a little. “It’s pretty complicated.”

That wasn’t a no, though, so Kasamatsu sat down at Kise’s low table, folding his legs under him, and looked at him expectantly.

Kise licked his lips—was he nervous? Why? “Right,” he said. “Okay.”

He started to sit opposite Kasamatsu, but Kasamatsu didn’t want it to be like this, didn’t want him fidgety and strange and distant, so he thrust out a foot to stop him.

When Kise blinked at him, he snapped, “you expect me to listen to your sob story without anything to drink? Where the hell are your manners?”

Kise stared at him—only at him, the surprise pulling his attention here and now—and Kasamatsu fought the urge to grin in victory. “Uh,” he said, “…tea?”

“Thank you,” Kasamatsu said. “You can start while you make it, I don’t mind.” He was curious as hell, after all.

“I appreciate that,” Kise said, voice dry. He wandered over to his stove to put on tea, turning on the light as he went, and Kasamatsu watched him, feeling a little warm and fidgety. He’d wanted Kise to let him in and he had, physically, was in his kitchen making Kasamatsu tea and trusting him with his secrets and that. Meant more than he thought it would.

“Um,” Kise called from the kitchen. “You know that little guy who plays for Seirin?”

Kasamatsu blinked himself back to the conversation at hand. He did—he knew he did, had just been thinking about him the other day. “Blue hair?”

“Yeah,” said Kise. “Kuroko Tetsuya.”

“Sure,” said Kasamatsu, shrugging. He remembered how excited Kise had been to play against Seirin, that first time, how happy he’d been to see the little weirdo, how utterly competitive he’d become against Kagami when it became clear how good they were together.

“And you know Aomine Daiki, he plays for Touo now—“

Kasamatsu rolled his eyes. “No,” he interrupted acidly, “I have never heard of the ace of the Generation of Miracles, in fact it’s safe to say I don’t know anything about them at all, including the one of them I’m talking to right now.”

Kise laughed at him and Kasamatsu glanced away so he wouldn’t be caught staring at the little shake in his shoulders. “Our reputation does precede us, I get it.”

He paused for a second, and Kasamatsu was about to prompt him to keep going, when he said, “Well, I was in the mall the other day, and I saw them kissing.”

That stopped Kasamatsu dead. That was what had made Kise despairing, that was what had put him off, two of his old teammates kissing? Was he so disgusted by the idea that he was put off his game this much? It didn’t seem likely that Kise was homophobic—not with how Good he was, and certainly he’d never said anything about Midorima and Takao—but. Kasamatsu felt a little cold with the possibility anyway. “And that bothers you?” he asked, carefully neutral, because if Kise said yes it would be way worse than a rejection, it would be Kise setting himself against what Kasamatsu was (probably was, as far as he could figure), and that would hurt like hell.

Kise flapped a hand at him, going a little red. “Not in a homophobic way!” he said hastily, and Kasamatsu felt his whole body flood with relief. He made himself listen as Kise continued. “Oh my god, no, it’s—pretty much the total opposite.” He worked his lips anxiously and Kasamatsu had a moment to wonder what the fuck _that_ meant before he finished, “I’m. Kind of in love with them.”

Kasamatsu stared at him, stunned. “I-in love with them,” he said, and his voice came out a little strangled, a little weird. He hoped like hell Kise didn’t notice.

He didn’t seem to—just nodded, his cheeks getting redder, and Kasamatsu had never seen him blush before, wanted to step up to him and press a hand to his cheek to see how warm it was, knew he was fixating on what Kise looked like because it was easier than thinking about what he felt like when he thought about Kise in love. In love with them, what did that even mean?

He blinked himself out of his panic. “Like—what, as a concept? Like how some people are like, oh, I’m in love with, whatever, x celebrity couple—“ He could probably handle that, as weird as it would be, Kise being some kind of super fan to his friends—

“No,” said Kise carefully, “no, I mean. As people. Separately. I’m in love with them,” and, oh.

“What,” said Kasamatsu, still stunned, “both of them? You’re in love with Aomine Daiki and—“ he frowned and waved a hand.

“Kuroko Testuya,” Kise filled in helpfully. “Yeah.”

“Wow,” said Kasamatsu. He’d never even been in love with one person and here was Kise, confident enough in his love for _two_ to feel comfortable just—stating it, and he’d seen them kissing each other. “Fuck,” he said, because. Fuck. “No wonder you’re upset.”

Kise let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck like he was a bird with ruffled feathers, soothing himself. “Yeah,” he said, sounding relieved, and Kasamatsu wondered suddenly if he’d ever told anyone any of this before. He wanted to say something—thank Kise for his trust, tell him it was okay, _something_ , but everything felt cheap and trite.

The kettle boiled, saving him from having to say anything at all, and Kise went to retrieve it. The silence was comfortable, somehow, though there was a whole lump of emotion in Kasamatsu’s stomach that he was definitely saving to work through later, when he had time.

He licked his lips, trying to put himself in Kise’s shoes. “Are you, like. Gonna do anything about it?”

Kise shook his head, pouring the tea. “No,” he said. “They were dating in middle school, before we all went our separate ways, and I guess—“ he swallowed. “I guess they are, again, probably.”

Kasamatsu stared at the tense line of his back, resisted the urge to stand up and smooth his hands over it, reassuring. “They don’t know how you feel,” he said, because if they did—he couldn’t imagine anyone knowing that Kise was in love with them and not doing anything about it.

Kise brought him his tea with careful hands. “Kurokocchi does,” he said, and returned to the kitchen for his own. “Aominecchi—“ he shook his head.

Kasamatsu stared at him as he sat, shocked. “Blue-hair turned you _down?_ ”

Kise smiled at his tea, sad and a little lost, and Kasamatsu felt his jaw tighten. God, fuck that guy.

“Nothing dramatic,” Kise said softly. “They were already dating when I confessed, and it was more to get it off my chest than out of any real hope.”

“But then they break up, and you get your hopes up again, until you saw them,” Kasamatsu said, just—trying to imagine how much that had to hurt. “Shit, Kise.”

Kise stared at the tea between his hands, his long lashes sweeping cheeks that were still a little pink. “Shit,” he echoed. He flicked his eyes up to meet Kasamatsu’s gaze, catching him staring, and Kasamatsu twitched, fighting the urge to look away.

“Thank you, senpai,” Kise said, serious and sincere, and he was doing that—thing, again, the thing where the rest of the world fell away and it was just the two of them, eyes locked. “For listening, and for being here at all.”

Kasamatsu shrugged and looked away, because, he—he should be thanking _Kise_ , for trusting him and for his hospitality and. And. “Whatever,” he said. “Just can’t have you a weepy mess on the court.”

He felt Kise’s gaze on him, and when he glanced back Kise was watching him through his eyelashes, his face soft behind the steam of his tea, and Kasamatsu picked up his own. It was too hot and he burned his tongue and he kicked Kise under the table for not warning him, and Kise laughed and apologized but at least he stopped staring at him, stopped looking so knowing, and he was still smiling when Kasamatsu left so he must have done something right.

He replayed it in his head all the way home, that little unhesitating _I’m in love with them_ , a little anxious but anxious only about Kasamatsu’s reaction, not anxious about its own truth. He wondered how it felt, that certainty; wondered how it felt to look at someone and know.

He stared up at the darkening sky and imagined what Kise had looked like, when he confessed to Kuroko. Had he been as sure then as he was now? As confident and unhurried in saying it? How had Kuroko turned him down? Kise had said it wasn’t dramatic so he must have been nice about it. But. Turning Kise down for Aomine?

And Aomine—Aomine didn’t even _know_. Kise was torturing himself, was, was longing for him, and Aomine had no idea.

He felt a lot of things about that. He was sorry for Kise, or. _Sad_ for him, more than sorry. He was pissed off at Kuroko and Aomine for not seeing and not doing something about it, for letting Kise just be—pushed out, for letting him fall like this.

He was also jealous—jealous of the confidence Kise had in himself and his emotions, but that wasn’t all and he knew it. He was jealous of them, too, he could admit that. He was jealous of Aomine and Kuroko for—for having caught Kise’s eye, for being loved by him.

But he didn’t want Kise to be in love with _him_. It would be nice if Kise found him attractive, that would be a good ego boost, and if he was interested, if. If he maybe wanted to try—Kasamatsu’s throat was dry, and he fished his water bottle out of his backpack and took a long, flustered drink. He. If. On the very very off-chance that Kise might someday be interested in pursuing something with him that would be extremely welcome _BUT_ that was a very different thing than Kise being _in love_. Kasamatsu wasn’t _in love_ , after all, and Kise had far too many one-sided loves already.

(But it wouldn’t be one-sided, said a small piece of his brain that was still wrapped up in the softness of Kise’s face through the steam. Not the way it is with the others. Maybe you could—)

Kasamatsu squashed that voice firmly and ran the entire way home, focusing only on the pumping of his legs and the breath in his lungs.

+

Things were better, after that. Kise was better, looser. He started flirting again, with the girls that lingered at the edges of the court, with their other teammates, and Kasamatsu wondered how he’d never noticed Kise’s interest in men. He still got sad, sometimes—Kasamatsu occasionally caught him staring at nothing, his eyes distant, but all it took was a slap or a kick or even a pointed glare and he was back up and smiling.

They trained hard—they trained really hard, and Kise threw himself into it with a will. Kasamatsu appreciated that fiercely even as he worried about it, a little. Distraction was good but it was still distraction, and he didn’t like that Kise had so much to be distracted from.

He worried even more when, a few weeks later, he peered through the spy hole in his door to find Kise on his doorstep, looking pale and jittery and strange.

“Kasamatsucchi,” he started when Kasamatsu opened his door, and then narrowed his eyes. “Your name is too long. Can I call you Kasamacchi?”

Kasamatsu scowled at him, ignoring the way his cheeks heated. “No. I’m still your senpai, idiot, don’t go giving me cute nicknames.”

Kise ran a hand over the back of his head—settling feathers again, apologetic. “I, ah, have a plan. For our game against Touo.”

Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows. Kise was here on a Wednesday night about basketball? “You have a plan. And you’re here because it’s a plan that actually involves people other than yourself. Are you drunk? Am I dreaming?”

Kise pressed a hand to his heart like an actor in a play, graceful even in this strange, nervous mood. “Deserved barbs, all,” he admitted. “Can I come in?”

Kasamatsu stared at him for another minute, suspicious, and then opened the door wider to let him pass. “Let me guess,” he said, testing for a reaction. “You’re gonna seduce Aomine Daiki, thus rendering him useless, and the rest of us will sweep easily to victory.”

He saw Kise try to smile. That was the worst part—he saw the effort, before Kise’s face caved and he took a horrible, sobbing breath. It hit Kasamatsu like a blow, his grip nearly slipping off his own doorknob. “Shit,” he said, angry at himself for pushing it, for bringing it up at all, “sorry, did something happen, is that why you’re—“

“No,” Kise interrupted, shaking his head and getting his face under control. “I mean—yes, something happened, but I really do have a plan and if it’s all the same to you that’s what I’d much prefer to discuss,” he said, all in a rush. He swallowed. “Please.”

Kasamatsu finished closing the door. He had a million questions and none of them were appropriate, a, a million things he wanted to do that were even less so—hug him, sit him down and yell at him, run out the door and beat Aomine Daiki to a bloody goddamn pulp. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay.”

He made them tea. Kise’s voice got steadier as he drank it, calmer as he outlined his plan. He stopped flicking his eyes into every corner as if he expected someone to leap out at him, and Kasamatsu felt himself calming, too, letting go of some of his rage. He got his notes and his glasses from his desk and went to join Kise at the table.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve mapped out Touo’s favorite defensive patterns. Aomine’s goddamn impossible on offense, but if we can at least be just as unstoppable, match them point for point—“

He looked up. Kise was watching him, smiling a little. “What?” he snapped.

Kise shook his head and tapped the skin next to his eye. “I like your glasses.”

“Shut up and listen,” Kasamatsu said automatically, ears burning. He looked back down at his notes. “If they do one to one, though, that’s when it’s an issue, because there’s no way they’ll put Aomine on anyone but you.” He was worried, a little, that talking about Aomine so much would put Kise back into the miserable space he arrived in, but it seemed instead like it almost made it better. Maybe it was easier, thinking about him as an opponent instead of—whatever else.

Kise hummed his agreement, leaning back on Kasamatsu’s couch. “Momoicchi knows I can’t beat him,” he said. “She’s seen me try like a thousand times.” He raised his eyes to Kasamatsu’s. “But I’m not alone anymore.”

Kasamatsu licked his lips. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

+

Kise showed up the next Wednesday as well, and then the Wednesday after that, and Kasamatsu started looking forward to his knock. It was nice to have someone to talk shit over with, and it turned out Kise was smart as _hell _about this stuff—about most stuff, really; he had a kind of easy, lazy intelligence that pissed Kasamatsu off no end (some people worked to be that smart, thank you very much).__

So when he didn’t show, just when Kasamatsu was beginning to expect it, well—that was fucking rude, wasn’t it? 

He let his annoyance carry him to Kise’s door and knocked loud and long. 

It took several minutes for Kise to answer and he was about to knock again, louder and longer, when the door swung open. 

Kise was wearing a suit. It was a really _nice_ suit—charcoal grey over a dark red shirt, a really _expensive_ suit, a suit that fit him like it was made for him, it probably fucking had been made for him, and he had a rose in his buttonhole the color of his eyes and he was in _high school_ , no one in high school looked that good in a suit (maybe no one at all looked that good in a suit) and he blinked at Kasamatsu in surprise and then smiled like some kind of fucking fairytale prince and said happily, “Senpai, hello!” 

“It’s Wednesday,” Kasamatsu said dumbly. 

Kise raised his eyebrows at him. “Sorry?” 

“I-it’s Wednesday,” Kasamatsu said again. “We—strategy meetings, you didn’t show—what the _fuck_ are you wearing?” 

Kise glanced down at himself, grimacing, like Kasamatsu had caught him looking bad instead of. Of. “Ah,” he said, and then glanced over his shoulder. “Sakicchi—“ 

“I know, I know,” said a light voice from behind him, and Kise stepped aside a little to reveal a pretty girl in a really lovely lilac dress. She was pulling on incongruously practical shoes over her sheer tights. “Time’s up, yeah?” 

“Sorry,” Kise said, and then seemed to remember Kasamatsu was there. “Um, Saki, this is my friend Kasamatsu. Senpai, Saki.” 

Saki raised a hand in greeting. “Yo,” she said, and piled her hair atop her head, glancing back to Kise. “I’ll see you—what, two weeks?” 

Kise bit his lip. “Yeah, I think,” he said slowly. “Maybe we’ll go ice skating.” 

She grinned and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Sounds like fun.” Running a hand down her skirt, she sighed. “I don’t mind giving up those death-trap heels, but it’s _such_ a beautiful dress. I’ll send it back to you once it’s clean?” 

Kise hesitated, and then smiled at her. “Keep it.” 

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “What? No way, I can’t let you—“ 

“It’s nothing,” he interrupted, waving a hand at her. “Payment for your charming company.” 

She bit her lip. “Thank you, Ki-chan.” She leaned up and kissed him again, quick and appreciative, and then skipped down the hall, beaming. 

When Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows at Kise he looked away, coloring. “We were on a date,” he said, stepping aside so Kasamatsu could come into his apartment. “I should have told you, it’s just—something I have to do, every month or so.” He sighed, rolling his shoulders. “Keep up a front for the cameras.” 

Kasamatsu frowned, watching him. “I can go,” he offered, because there was a weariness to Kise’s movements he didn’t like. “If you’re tired, we can meet some other time.” 

Kise shook his head. “No,” he said, still not quite looking at Kasamatsu. “It’s good you’re here, I usually.” He broke off. “I don’t know, it’s—weird, you know?” He jerked his head toward a part of the apartment that Kasamatsu had never seen. “C’mon, tell me what you’re thinking while I change out of this ridiculous suit.” 

He walked off, and Kasamatsu trailed after him, hesitating at the doorway to his bedroom. Did he follow him in? Would that be weird? Would it be weirder _not_ to? He’d seen Kise change so many times but it was always in and out of his basketball jersey and his school uniform, not—this. He settled for leaning against the doorway. 

Kise slid the suit jacket off and Kasamatsu could see his shoulder muscles move under thin red silk. The suit pants fit in a way that made the line of the shirt a perfect swooping v, emphasizing the slimness of his waist, the graceful hollow at the small of his back. 

“Why’d you give her the dress?” Kasamatsu asked, because he was curious as well as to distract himself. If Kise had been straight the answer would have been obvious—if this hadn’t been some weird arranged screen but a real date with real feelings involved, he would be trying to woo her—woo her the way a rich asshole would, but still. As it was, it had been a really unnecessarily nice gesture. 

“Because she’s sweet and she deserves it and she likes me,” Kise said simply, turning to look sideways at him. “Some of them aren’t and don’t.” He slid his tie off and started undoing the buttons of his shirt. 

Kasamatsu looked away. 

“Don’t worry,” said Kise, misinterpreting his expression. “She knows it’s all a sham. Besides, she doesn’t like me as much as she likes Mori-senpai from the class above her.” Kasamatsu could hear the smile in his voice. “Not that I blame her, guy’s got a nice jaw.” 

Kasamatsu looked at him in surprise. It was a bad idea—Kise’s suit pants slid to the ground and Kasamatsu was left staring at the curve of his ass in grey silk boxers as he bent over to pick them up, the long, perfect curvature of his legs. “Y-you talk about boys with them?” 

Kise shrugged. “They talk to me about boys, mostly,” he said. “That’s why they do this. They’re mostly shy girls without the confidence to ask out the guy they actually like. They go out with me, get papped a few times looking gorgeous, and bam. Confidence through the roof, and I get to keep my reputation as a sleazy heterosexual.” 

Kasamatsu laughed a little, feeling breathless. “Charity dating.” 

Kise pulled on a pair of tight jeans. “Only sort of,” he said. “It’s not like I don’t get anything out of it. Fancy meals, movies.” He smiled, half-dressed and weary and gorgeous. “Friendship, sometimes, although not often.” 

Kasamatsu watched him as he wriggled a little to settle the jeans properly on his hipbones, trying to just—watch like a normal person having a conversation. “Why not?” he asked. 

Kise wrinkled his nose and picked up a loose, wide-necked sweater. “We don’t often have much in common,” he said. He pulled the sweater over his head and Kasamatsu took the opportunity to press a hand over his eyes, hard, trying to pull himself together. 

“Sometimes they find me a girl who’s interested in sports, that’s always fun, but it’s still—I don’t know,” Kise continued when he was fully dressed. He ran a hand through his hair, settling it. “I think partially it’s me, I think the fact that I’m—performing, kind of, makes it hard for me to make real connections.” 

Kasamatsu nodded, not quite trusting his voice. 

Kise leaned over to where he’d left his suit jacket lying on the bed. “Damn,” he said mildly, plucking the yellow rose out of his buttonhole. “I was going to give this to her so she could be caught leaving my apartment with it.” He flashed Kasamatsu a weird sort of smile. “Finishing touch for the media sharks.” 

Kasamatsu scowled at him. “I can’t imagine how you fucking stand it,” he said. “Being watched all the time.” 

Kise shook his head. “It’s not so bad, I’m making a big deal out of nothing.” He wandered over to Kasamatsu, still holding the rose, and looked him over. “Ah,” he said, and leaned in, tucking the stem through the tab for the zipper of Kasamatsu’s jacket. “There we go,” he said, smiling, warm-eyed, too close. “For listening to me whine, senpai." 

He slid away, back into the other room. Kasamatsu grit his teeth against the beat of his heart and tore the rose off his jacket, hurling it at Kise. It bounced harmlessly off his ear and he turned, surprised. 

“Idiot,” Kasamatsu snapped. “You want _me_ to be caught leaving with it? You wanna undo your whole publicity stunt? It’s bad enough I’m even here, they’re gonna photograph me leaving your apartment and draw the wrong conclusions anyway!” 

“Oh,” said Kise, something flickering a little in his eyes. “Ah—sorry." 

Kasamatsu stomped over to him to kick him in the shin. “Don’t apologize,” he snapped. “That’s not—agh.” He slumped down on Kise’s couch. “Whatever.” 

Kise stared at him for a minute. “Senpai, are you alright?” 

"Fine,” Kasamatsu said quickly, sitting up straighter. “I’m fine. I’m—tired. Get me some tea.” 

He immediately felt bad about it—Kise was clearly _actually_ tired, and he could make his own goddamn tea, but he couldn’t exactly take it back. He took the time that Kise was in the kitchen to take his notes out of his bag and put on his glasses and think very unsexy thoughts. He also—silently—slid over and scooped the rose off the floor, tucking it into his bag where it would be safe from prying eyes. 

They resumed their weekly meetings after that, mostly at Kasamatsu’s place, which Kasamatsu was simultaneously relieved and frustrated by. He’d really rather not have a repeat performance of the suit incident but being able to watch Kise slowly become comfortable in a space that had just been _his_ for so long was—torture of another sort. 

And then one night, about half an hour after he’d seen him out, Kise came back. 

Kasamatsu had been getting ready to sleep and he opened his door frowning. “What’s up? You forget something?” 

Kise shook his head, and Kasamatsu blinked at him. He looked miserable, his lips trembling and his cheeks pale. “Um,” he said, swallowing rapidly, “I just saw Aomine and Kuroko with their new boyfriend a-and I really—“ he cut himself off, closing his eyes, and Kasamatsu saw with a start that his eyelashes were wet. “I don’t think I should. Go home alone.” 

It took a minute for Kasamatsu to get over the fact that Kise was on the edge of _crying_ and actually process what he’d said, and then he was suddenly so angry he could barely breathe. He opened his door and then realized Kise still had his eyes closed, like he wasn’t sure what Kasamatsu would say, like he thought he’d actually send him away to be alone like this. “Come on, then,” he snapped. “Don’t make me regret this already.” 

Kise slipped inside past him. “Thank you,” he said, his voice shaking. 

Kasamatsu sighed, not looking at him. Kise didn’t seem like he’d be able to stand even the weight of his gaze, right now. “There’s a spare futon in the closet in the bedroom,” he said. “Set it up yourself, I’m going to sleep.” 

He led Kise into the bedroom and then curled up in the center of his own futon, fists curled, trying to talk himself out of punching a wall. How _fucking_ dare they? 

He heard Kise moving quietly around the room and he wanted to sit up and grab him, pull him in and hold him until he stopped looking like he was going to fall apart at the seams. He didn’t—it wasn’t his place, and it wouldn’t help in the long run anyway—but it was a near thing. 

Kise switched off the light and Kasamatsu lay for a while in the dark, fuming. 

“I know you love them,” he said at last, because he couldn’t just—let Kise believe it was okay for them to do this, “but if I ever see either of those assholes treat you as badly as it seems like they treat you, I’ll beat the shit out of them.” 

“It’s not their fault,” Kise said softly. “They don’t do anything, they’re—they’re just. Living.” Kasamatsu could hear him breathing, harsh, too-fast, and he bit his lip hard. “That’s—that’s what this whole thing with Kagami means,” Kise continued, “it’s me, I’m.” The _unlovable_ hung in the air, the _not good enough_ , deafening, and Kasamatsu wanted to scream _WRONG WRONG WRONG_ but Kise was crying, lying there crying on Kasamatsu’s guest futon and he needed. Something coherent, something he could believe, something that would feel like more than just platitudes or Kasamatsu’s own subjective bullshit. 

He took, a minute to find the words and then said, as clearly as he could, “Yeah, probably.” 

He heard Kise shift. “Wh—“ 

“In fact,” Kasamatsu said, cutting him off, “if I were gonna choose the person in my life least worthy of being loved, it would definitely be the hot professional model slash star athlete slash genius who, upon discovering that the two people he loves are not only dating each other but also someone else, proceeds to defend them all to a complete stranger and take the responsibility for their shitty goddamn actions onto himself.” He probably hadn’t needed both ‘hot’ and ‘professional model’ but hopefully it would get lost in the rest. “Because that guy has _no_ good qualities worthy of being respected or admired.” 

“Kasamacchi—“ Kise said, his voice a little steadier, a little wondering, and Kasamatsu clenched his fists hard. 

“Call me that again and I’m kicking you out on your ass, I don’t care if you’ve missed the last train.” He rolled further over, trying to ignore how aware he was of Kise’s breathing, screwing his eyes tight shut. “Go to sleep, Kise.” 

“R-right,” said Kise. “Senpai—thank you.” 

He wasn’t crying anymore. Kasamatsu threw a pillow at him in relief. “ _Sleep_ , idiot.” 

\+ 

They lost against Touo. 

It was closer than Kasamatsu could ever have dreamed it could be, a couple months ago. Before he started meeting with Kise every week. Before he knew how much Kise needed to win, before he let his determination to make that happen become his actual belief it would. Kise was incredible—Kise was nearly perfect, Kise was a terrifying mirror to Aomine’s terrifying light, but they lost, and Aomine turned his back on him, leaving him trembling and collapsed on the court. 

Kasamatsu helped him up, trembling himself, trembling with awe and exhaustion and rage, and once he’d gotten Kise into the locker room he hunted Aomine down. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Aomine turned, raising an eyebrow when he saw Kasamatsu. “Considering I just beat you guys, I’m gonna go with ‘nothing’.” 

Kasamatsu stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t fucking treat him this way,” he said, closing the distance between them, going toe-to-toe. “You can’t do this to him and honestly pretend you’re _friends_.” 

Aomine’s eyes sharpened, and the corner of his mouth turned up, mirthless. “Oh, I see,” he said. “This is about Kise, huh.” 

Kasamatsu glared at him. “Of course it is.” 

Aomine scratched his jaw and mocked, “Of course it is.” 

Kasamatsu tensed. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean—“ 

"You know,” Aomine cut in, voice easy but his eyes still sharp. “It’s cute that you think you know him better than I do. Adorable, really.” He shifted his stance, suddenly just a little scarier, a little taller, the set of his jaw a little more challenging. “I’ve known Kise a long time, and I can tell you this much: he doesn’t need a _fucking_ nursemaid. If he’s got a problem with me, he can take it up with me himself.” 

“I don’t care how long you’ve known him,” Kasamatsu snapped, “and I _definitely_ don’t care what you think he needs.” 

“Kise doesn’t need shit from me,” Aomine said, glaring. “Trust me. He’s fine. It was a good game.” 

“Yeah,” said Kasamatsu, standing his ground. “It was an incredible game, and you’re a fucking asshole.” 

“What,” Aomine drawled, “I should’ve helped him up? Why? He can stand on his own—or if he can’t, he’s got you.” He smirked a little. “You think I should feel bad for the guy just because he’s in love with me? He still _lost_.” 

Kasamatsu went cold with shock, taking a step back. “You _know?_ ” he snapped. “You know, and you still fucking—flaunt it, rub your shit with Kuroko in his face?” 

“Look,” Aomine said sharply, and Kasamatsu blinked, because his tone was totally different, like the mention of Kuroko’s name had flipped a switch, changing him from a hostile, mocking thing to something more serious, more real. “I get it, you care about the guy. So do I. But me and Kuroko and Kagami, that’s just something he’s gotta get used to. _He_ knows that, so I suggest you wise the fuck up.” 

Kasamatsu clenched his fists at his sides. “You’re not even going to fucking apologize—“ 

“Why would I?” Aomine tucked his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t do shit. Pass on my compliments, unless it’ll make your head explode.” He turned away, waving a hand in goodbye. 

Kasamatsu stared hard at the ground, feeling frustrated and helpless and obvious, exposed. _Of course it is_ , Aomine mocked in his head. _I get it. You care about him._ He swallowed. He didn’t—nursemaid, did he? He wasn’t smothering, he didn’t treat Kise like a child. 

He shook himself. “Fuck off, asshole,” he muttered. Aomine was just wrong. He was wrong and he was cruel and he was trying to pick apart the way Kasamatsu treated his friends in order to justify his own selfishness. 

He jogged back to the locker room, disquieted. Kise was still there, still in his jersey; he was sitting on the bench with a towel around his neck, staring at his phone. 

Kasamatsu stopped a few feet from him. “Kise.” 

Kise looked up at him, surprised. 

Kasamatsu licked his lips. “You—you know I respect you, right?” 

“Um,” said Kise, staring at him, “Why?” 

Kasamatsu averted his eyes. “Just—something Aomine said.” 

Kise’s brows knit. “You talked to Aominecchi?” 

Kasamatsu scuffed his toe against the floor. “I kind of chewed him out,” he admitted. “But—the point is, you. You don’t feel like I baby you, right?” 

Kise blinked at him, and then smiled a little, disbelieving. “Yesterday you kicked me across the gym, senpai,” he said reassuringly. “If that’s what you consider babying, please never have children.” 

Kasamatsu blew out a breath. “Good. Whatever.” He frowned. “He says he sends his compliments.” 

“I, um. I think I got them, actually.” Kise held up his phone. Kasamatsu crossed to him, reaching out to steady the screen so he could read it. 

Kise had two texts from Aomine. The first just said _nice ass_ and the second said _you looked pretty good out there until I won_. He stared from them to Kise’s face. “He’s taunting you?” 

Kise shook his head, his face amused and sad and exhausted. “I think he’s trying to talk.” He sighed. “You remember the first time I showed up at your apartment? I said something had happened, but I didn’t want to talk about it?” 

Kasamatsu nodded, coming to sit next to him on the bench. 

“Well,” said Kise. “It was—I told him how I felt.” He swallowed and ran a hand through his hair. “But—it was in the middle of giving him advice about Kurokocchi and that was—more important? You know? At the time it was way more important he understand how Kurokocchi felt than how I did, so I didn’t really let him respond, and he kind of tried to bring it back up but.” He laughed a little. “He’s really bad at it.” 

“If those are his attempts, you’re not fucking kidding,” Kasamatsu said. “He really thinks the best way to talk about your feelings is to sexually harass you over text?” 

Kise let out a little sigh. “I think it’s because the only other time we got close to talking about it was after I seduced him." 

One of Kasamatsu’s hands slipped a little as he went to lean back on his arms and he caught himself with an effort. His heart came loose, though, sticking somewhere low against his ribs. “You—seduced him,” he repeated, proud of how steady his voice was. 

“Mm,” said Kise, his eyes a little distracted, and Kasamatsu’s heart slid a little lower. Kise seemed to remember he was there and flushed red. “Nothing—actually happened, really, I just sent him a sexy picture and teased him and then realized I wanted more than just meaningless sex, so I called it off.” 

“Y-you sent him a _nude?_ ” Kasamatsu asked, which. Was absolutely not his business at all, and one of these days Kise was going to tell him to back the hell off and stop prying into his personal life, but he suddenly couldn’t stop imagining Kise posing in front of his bathroom mirror, stripped down, couldn’t help but imagine the concentration on his face as he ran his hands over his body, figuring out the best framing and lighting to make himself look good for—for. 

It, it was making it hard to connect his mouth back up to his brain, was all. 

Kise groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “It was tasteful,” he wailed. “Just shirtless and—um.” He shook himself and sat up. “ _Anyway,_ ” he said. “The point is. The point is, that’s—always what Aominecchi’s wanted from me, and I know that. There’s no real point in talking, so it’s okay that he’s so bad at it.” 

Kasamatsu thought about the hostility in Aomine’s voice, his pointed glare. There had been something there uncomfortably like jealousy, at the very least an undeniable possessiveness— _it’s cute you think you know him better_ —and he didn’t have any idea what to do about that, no idea how to even address it, no idea whether it would help or hurt Kise to know that Aomine might feel something too. He swallowed, guilty. 

Kise stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. 

Kasamatsu blinked himself out of his thoughts, staring up at him. “What?” 

Kise shot him a quick glance, and then looked away. “I made you waste all that time planning a strategy with me and then I couldn’t even win,” he said, and started toward his locker. As soon as his foot hit the floor he winced and swayed, catching himself against the wall. 

Kasamatsu was on his feet immediately, pushing him back down on the bench. “Idiot,” he snapped, “I knew you were pushing yourself too hard. What fucking good will you be if you injure yourself?” 

Kise bit his lip, not looking at him. “Sorry,” he muttered, and then closed his eyes. “I’m—really tired.” 

Kasamatsu sighed, crossing his arms. “You think it was all about this game?” he asked. 

Kise looked sideways at him. “What?” 

“Not everything’s about you, you know,” Kasamatsu said, holding his eyes. “This game might’ve been the one _you_ needed to win, but it wasn’t the one _we_ did.” He shrugged. “We lost. Suck it up and move on, and don’t think that just because your plan to stick it to Aomine didn’t pan out that you get your Wednesday nights back. You’re too useful a sounding-board.” 

Kise blinked at him. “Oh.” 

Kasamatsu held out a hand. “C’mon, then,” he said. “We’re going outside and you’re shelling out for a goddamn taxi because I know you can afford it and there’s no way you’re walking home.” 

Kise took his hand and he swung him up, pulling his arm over his shoulders so Kise could lean on him. They paused for a moment so Kise could swing his gym bag over his other shoulder and then made their way through the door and out of the stadium entirely, into cool evening air. 

Kise leaned his head against Kasamatsu’s, temple-to-temple. “Thanks,” he said, his voice simple, close, sincere. 

Kasamatsu nodded, letting his own head tilt into Kise’s, let him take some of his weight, and they stood by the curb, wrapped in silence. 

\+ 

Kasamatsu stared at Kise. “No,” he said. 

Kise bit his lip, his eyes pleading. “Senpai—“ 

“I said no,” Kasamatsu said. “You’re not missing three days worth of practice. Not now.” 

“I don’t want to,” Kise admitted. “But I’ve been putting it off for months because of training and I missed the last shoot I was signed on for entirely, and.” He shook his head. “My agent says if I miss this they’re gonna stop offering me jobs.” 

"So give it up,” Kasamatsu snapped, irritable, unfair. “It’s not like you need the money anymore, and you can’t possibly think you won’t make it in basketball.” 

Kise looked away, staring hard at the floor. 

Kasamatsu sighed. “Sorry,” he said grudgingly. “It’s your life, and I know it must be hard to give up, the fame and everything.” 

Kise shook his head. “That’s—not why I do it.” He flicked his eyes up to Kasamatsu’s. “Please? Coach says I can, after the way we played against Touo—“ 

“We lost against Touo,” Kasamatsu gritted out, and then hated himself for it—hated the way Kise’s shoulders dropped, hated echoing Aomine— _he still lost_ —even a little. 

What the fuck was wrong with him? He ran a hand over his face. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He stared hard at his notes. He really _couldn’t_ afford to let Kise go, couldn’t afford to have him out of shape, even three days out of shape, for the upcoming game against Fukuda Sogo. But—his eyes caught again in the slope of Kise’s shoulders, the set of his mouth, like he was braced for rejection. “Fine,” he snapped. 

Kise’s whole face opened up. “Really?” he asked. “Senpai, thank you—“ 

“But I’m coming with you,” Kasamatsu continued grimly. 

Kise blinked at him. “What?” 

Kasamatsu ran a hand through his hair. He was absolutely going to regret this. “You said it was at a resort, right?” he asked. “There are basketball courts?” 

Kise nodded. “They were thinking about doing a shoot at one, early on in the planning process.” 

“So,” said Kasamatsu, looking back down at his papers, “I’ll come with you, and after you’re finished shooting for the day we’ll train one-on-one. That way neither of us lose practice time and you can keep your stupid peacock job.” 

When he looked up from his notes Kise was smiling wide at him, his lower lip caught between his teeth. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, eyes bright. 

“I’m not doing it for you,” Kasamatsu snapped, his cheeks heating ridiculously. “Your game goes to shit when you’re upset, that’s all.” 

Kise nodded at him, but he didn’t stop smiling, and Kasamatsu pressed a hand to his eye. “Get out of here. I’ll call coach and make sure it’s fine. If it’s not, I’ll text you.” 

Kise threw him a jaunty salute and let himself out, looking happier than Kasamatsu could remember seeing him in a long time. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face with his hands, trying to scrub out his blush with sheer force of will. He let his arms fall, slowly, and stared hard at his ceiling. 

Three full, uninterrupted days of being alone with Kise. 

He reached for his phone. Maybe—oh god _please_ —Coach would say no. 

He seemed to think about it for a minute, and then said, “Yeah, alright.” 

Kasamatsu resisted the urge to hurl his phone across the room. “Oh,” he said. “Really?” 

"Yeah,” said Coach. “It actually sounds like a great idea. See if you can improve your coordination out there—between Seirin and Shutoku, basketball’s basically becoming a doubles sport.” 

Kasamatsu gritted his teeth and did not point out that both those pairs were dating and that three days of practice was never going to get them to that level of intimacy on the court (nothing would). “Great,” he quavered instead. “Then I’ll see you when we get back.” 

"Yeah,” said Coach. “Good initiative on this, Kasamatsu-kun. It’s a smart idea.” 

Kasamatsu hung up. He hadn’t been thinking about improving their coordination. He hadn’t been thinking about strategy at all, he’d just. 

Fuck. 

He texted Kise a quick _coach says ok_ and received, seconds later, _♡!!!_

He sighed, flipped his phone closed, and went to take a shower. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Split this one up because it was getting TOO long for a one-shot. Unfortunately that means that nothing really happens in this section except a lot of build up, sorry about that! Next up: resort photoshoot??
> 
> Let me know what you think of this crazy interlocking experiment I'm doing! It has been extremely fun to write and the feedback has been wonderful. I love you all.


	2. Chapter 2

They met Kise’s agent at the train station. She was a short, broad woman with a no-nonsense face who fixed Kasamatsu immediately with a sharp look. “Which one are you?” she asked, and then interrupted herself. “No, I saw Aomine in a sports magazine last year, which makes you Kuroko. Good to see you stopped dying your hair such a ridiculous color.”

Before Kasamatsu could object that he was _neither_ , thank you, she had turned to Kise, eyes still sharp. “I’m very pleased for you,” she said briskly, “but I wish you would have mentioned that you were bringing your boyfriend. The resort is remote, but there will be cameras and I would have arranged for one of the girls to accompany us as well.” She sighed. “Oh well, guess it can’t be helped.”

Kise went red. “Um,” he said, giving Kasamatsu a horrified, apologetic look, “he’s—neither, actually.”

His agent stopped, her mouth half open. “Sorry?”

“I’m neither,” Kasamatsu confirmed, his own face probably lit up worse than Kise’s. He stuck out an awkward hand. “Kasamatsu Yukio,” he said. “I’m, uh. Also not his boyfriend.”

She stared at him, then at Kise, and then shook his hand, a quick, firm grip. “Then what are you?”

Kasamatsu swallowed, taking back his hand. “His captain?” he said, and there shouldn’t have been a question mark there, dammit, but he was off-balance. “In. Basketball.”

“Also my friend,” Kise chimed in, voice helpful and hopeful, and Kasamatsu shot him a glare.

“Ah,” said Kise’s agent. “Well. Yamano Haruna. Nice to meet you.” Abruptly she stalked off, and Kise fell in behind her with another despairing glance at Kasamatsu, who fell in behind _him_ with the sinking feeling that he had no idea what the hell he was getting himself into.

He was absolutely, one hundred percent correct.

By the time they were settled in on the train and sliding out of the city he’d learned the names of all of the photographers that would be photographing Kise, as well as his hairstylists, make-up artists, and wardrobe assistants. Kise seemed pleased with some of the names, grimaced at others, and Kasamatsu felt like he was glancing into some total other world, a life Kise knew backward and forward that had nothing to do with the already extremely busy, intense life they had in common.

Eventually Yamano excused herself, standing up and giving Kasamatsu another handshake, Kise a smile and a nod. “I’ll let you two enjoy the ride,” she said. “I’ll check in again when we’re close.”

She vanished down the train car, disappearing into the next.

Kasamatsu watched Kise watch the world go by out the window. “You talked to her about them?”

Kise shrugged, loose-shouldered, embarrassed. “I didn’t have many friends, growing up. She’s—like an aunt, kinda.”

Kasamatsu thought about Kise as a child—a pretty, lonely child with his heart filled with loves and no one to share them with. He clenched his hands on his knees.

They sat in silence for a moment, both staring out the window. Kise glanced at him, and then back out the window, and then at him again, until Kasamatsu snapped “what,” just to get him to stop.

Kise bit his lip, the early sun shifting across his face. “I’m sorry about that.”

Kasamatsu shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not—offended that she thought I was your boyfriend.” It was a little too much, a little too honest, and he scowled. “Although you could have been a little more helpful.”

Kise was staring out the window again, his cheeks tinged pink. “She shouldn’t have assumed.”

Kasamatsu licked his lips. “She wants you to be happy,” he said quietly. “She expects you to get what you deserve.”

Kise turned to stare at him, and Kasamatsu held his gaze for a minute before looking away, staring back out at the landscape. When he risked a glance at Kise, five telephone poles later, he was leaning back in his seat, his eyes closed.

The early light turned to real sunshine gold and Kasamatsu was half certain that Kise was asleep and it was the only thing that gave him the courage to say, “you must have known a long time ago, then.”

He waited, not looking at the seat across from him, and after a slow, sleepy pause Kise said, “Senpai?”

Kasamatsu licked his lips, but it wasn’t like he could take it back now. “That you were in love,” he explained, keeping his eyes on the rise and fall of the mountain ridge they were riding parallel to. It was soothing, like the sound of waves, kept his heart from smacking too loud against his ribs.

Kise shifted in his seat, and then he said quietly, “Yeah, I—I did.”

Kasamatsu curled further in his seat, wedging his knees up so he could sit truly facing the window. The mountain ridge dipped and fell away, and he was left with nothing to stare at but flat, sun-drenched plains. “What does it feel like?”

He thought for a minute Kise wouldn’t answer. He didn’t move, letting the sun sink into his skin.

“Well,” Kise said at last, hesitant, “it’s—kind of different, depending on who it’s with, you know? But.” He took a breath. “It’s like. You think of them all the time, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking about, and you want to spend time with them and you find yourself—thinking about little things they do, little habits or whatever or the certain way they frown or the way they look when they laugh. And.”

There was something in his voice that drew Kasamatsu’s eyes to him. He had his chin propped on his hand, his eyes mirroring the brightness of the sky outside. “You want them to be happy,” he said, and turned to look at Kasamatsu, some of that brightness caught in the corner of his smile. “More than anything in the world.”

Kasamatsu dropped his eyes. 

“It’s okay,” said Kise.

Kasamatsu’s head shot up, his throat tightening in panic. “Huh?”

Kise was still smiling at him, bright and soft and altogether _too much_ when combined with the words coming out of his mouth. “It’s okay,” he said again. “That you haven’t felt that way. It’s okay if you never do.”

“Oh,” said Kasamatsu, and ran his hand through his hair, his heart thundering. “Y-yeah.”

“You know Momoicchi?” Kise asked, and Kasamatsu blinked at the abrupt left turn. “Coaches for Touo now. Hot girl, pink hair, super scary genius?”

Kasamatsu frowned at him. “Yeah, duh. Why?”

Kise stretched out a leg and bumped one of Kasamatsu’s shins. “Just. If you ever want to talk about it, she’ll understand.”

Kasamatsu kicked him in the ankle. “Asshole,” he snapped, “I’m in high school, I’ve got my whole life for that shit. Don’t be so condescending.” He felt sick and relieved and shaken, and kicked Kise again for good measure.

Kise didn’t even flinch, his leg settling warm against Kasamatsu’s, and Kasamatsu wanted to curl into his miserable ball again but that would mean pulling away, so he just shoved his hands deep into his pockets and closed his eyes.

He woke up when door slid open and Yamano said quietly, “Boys,” pulling him from uneasy dreams.

The resort was huge and beautiful, halfway up a mountain and surrounded by red maples. It was the kind of place you saw in movies about mystical monks or retired Yakuza mobsters, the kind of place where everything made of wood was mahogany and everything else was gold leaf. Kasamatsu—with his patched-up jacket and his tiny apartment rented for a song from a traveling aunt—felt too poor to even _look_ at it. 

It was also deserted—closed for the off-season, Yamano said—except for a fleet of cars and trailers at one side of one of the buildings.

They were ushered over to it and Kise was immediately pulled inside a trailer and set upon by a cloud of snappy men and women with a variety of beauty implements. Yamano put a hand on Kasamatsu’s shoulder, stopping him from joining the bustling crowd. He blinked at her. “We don’t even get a chance to, like. Settle in?”

She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s already almost noon, they’ll be losing this light in a couple hours and it takes time to achieve perfection, even if you’re starting with a baseline as good as Kise.” She gestured him over to a round stone table, dappled with sunlight and the shadows of leaves. “You could go in, but you’d only be in the way,” she said matter-of-factly. She unzipped a folder and pulled out a handful of things. “Here’s a map, a room key, and a press pass so security doesn’t kick you out if they find you wandering around.” She looked him up and down. “They don’t make friendship passes,” she said archly, “so I had to improvise.”

Kasamatsu flushed and took them from her. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “He’ll be done in about forty-five minutes if you want to watch the shoot itself,” she said, and then she was gone, striding back to the group of trailers.

Kasamatsu peered at the map. Their room was marked, but it also looked like it was maybe a thousand years away, through ornamental gardens and pools and shit, and he did, maybe masochistically, want to actually watch the shoot—wanted to see Kise take his place in this other world, wanted to see him shine at something he clearly enjoyed.

He checked the map instead for basketball courts, pinned the press pass to his jacket, and spent a tense half-hour improving his three-pointer.

When he got back the focus of the crowd had changed from the group of trailers to the front steps of the building. They were long, deep steps, carved slightly unevenly so they might have been shaped by water rather than by architects. The sun was almost directly above, now, and to one side of the top of the steps several harassed-looking interns were setting up a large mirror. At the bottom of the steps, several intricate, expensive-looking cameras were lined up in a neat row, surrounded by a crowd of chattering people.

It took Kasamatsu a minute to find Kise—usually it was easy, usually his golden head stuck out like a sore thumb, especially combined with his height, but unusual hair colors seemed to be the uniform around here. He finally spotted him, sandwiched between a short, purple-haired woman who appeared to be brushing something all over his face and a tall, dour-looking man with a clipboard. He was wearing another suit—more casual than the one he’d worn on his date, more classic; white shirt and black tie and an oversized, asymmetrical black jacket that somehow made him seem slimmer and more graceful rather than bulky or awkward.

Kasamatsu watched as Kise waved away the woman and frowned at the man, shaking his head. The man raised his eyebrows, his pen hovering over the page. Kise said something else to him, glancing out over the steps, and caught sight of Kasamatsu. His face shifted, passing through surprise—had he forgotten Kasamatsu was here?—to a kind of open, guileless joy that made Kasamatsu’s heart go a little liquid in his chest. He waved; Kise waved back and then turned it into beckoning.

Kasamatsu jogged over to him, feeling self-conscious as he passed in front of the mirror and the cameras and all the busy people trying to do their jobs. No wonder Kise had acted like the Kaijo team should rearrange itself around him at first, if this was what he was used to.

“Senpai,” Kise said, stepping away from the frowning man with the clipboard. “I thought I’d lost you to the depths of the house, or maybe Yamano-san had eaten you.”

Kasamatsu made a face at him. “She was really nice,” he said. “Gave me this.” He pointed to the press pass pinned to his chest.

Kise reached out and ran his finger over the edges of it. “Oh I see, you’re here to interview me,” he teased.

Kasamatsu flushed a little, looking up at him, and had to do a kind of double-take. It hadn’t occurred to him how accustomed he was to the way Kise usually did his eyeliner—the long, graceful wing that he’d just kind of normalized as a part of Kise’s face. The makeup artists had removed it, though, darkening his lashes instead to such a degree that his eyes actually blazed in the sunlight. They’d heightened the contours of his face, drawing even more attention to his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the little bow-curve of his (very slightly) reddened lips. His hair was parted differently, too, falling artfully over one eye.

He looked—beautiful, and alien, and Kasamatsu was suddenly horribly and inexplicably nervous.

Kise raised an eyebrow at him. “Senpai?” He wrinkled his nose. “Is the makeup weird? They didn’t even let me look in a mirror.”

Kasamatsu shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s—I was surprised, is all. You look good.” He licked his lips, trying to think of how to let Kise know how he looked without being weird about it. “You—uh, your eyes especially.”

Kise’s fingers were still lingering on his badge. “Off the record,” he said conspiratorially, “I think my eyes are why I got the contract that started all this. Secretly it’s all down to genetics—nothing to do with me at all.”

Kasmatsu scowled at him. “I wouldn’t print that even if it weren’t off the record,” he said flatly. “We’re a respectable magazine, we don’t deal in bullshit.”

Kise blinked, startled, and then someone called, “Kise-kun!” and he turned away, calling back, “Coming!” To Kasamatsu he said, “Sorry, duty calls—I’ll see you after.”

Kasamatsu nodded, watching him go, and then sought out Yamano where she lingered behind the cameras. He slid as unobtrusively as possible through the crowds of photographers and interns, noticing a few people with passes like his own. He tried not to meet their eyes, afraid they’d know by his age and nervousness that he wasn’t actually one of their own.

Yamano gave him a nod, but didn’t take her eyes from the proceedings in front of them. Kise was being led up to the top step and pointed at. He shifted his body in various ways, apparently never the correct ones by the way everyone was yelling.

“He must really trust you,” Yamano said, her voice matter-of-fact.

Kasamatsu blinked at her. “What?”

She looked sideways at him. “He brought you here, didn’t he?” She turned ahead again, her eyes tracking the movement of several people who seemed to be rearranging fallen maple leaves into a more pleasing shape behind Kise. “You wouldn’t know it to look at him but he’s a pretty private guy. This isn’t a part of his life he’d share with you unless he knew you wouldn’t use it to hurt him.”

“Of course I’m not going to hurt him,” Kasamatsu said, startled. “And—he didn’t exactly bring me, I kind of invited myself. Didn’t really give him a chance to say no.” It occurred to him, though, that Kise had never really tried to say no; the number of times Kise had tried to say no to him at all was miniscule.

Yamano shook her head. “He brought you,” she said, “Kise’s nice but he’s no pushover—he can’t be, in this industry. Couple years ago there was a girl got too attached, she tried to invite herself along to these things—followed him to shoots in the city, tried to spy on me to get info for the ones elsewhere. I offered to help Kise deal with it, but he handled it himself. Still don’t really know what he did. Maybe he paid her off. Doesn’t matter, we never heard from her again.” Her face was unreadable. “Make no mistake,” she said, “you’re here because he wants you here, and that puts you in a class of your own.”

Kasamatsu watched Kise lean against the stone railing of the steps, one hand pushing his hair out of his eyes. Someone shouted something and he shifted one of his legs up a step, recentering himself, perfectly in control of every line of his body. Kasamatsu licked his lips. “Kuroko and Aomine, they never—?”

“He always said they weren’t interested, but I don’t think he ever even tried.” 

On the steps, Kise put his hands in his pockets, the very embodiment of the young, relaxed rich. He looked like he never thought about anything but money and cars and probably women and maybe wine. Kasamatsu shook his head. Nothing to do with me, he’d said.

Yamano sighed and checked her watch. “I have to go.”

Kasamatsu blinked at her, feeling obscurely abandoned. “You’re leaving?”

She smiled at him, a sardonic twitch of lips. “You think I don’t have anything better to do than babysit rich kids like Kise?” she asked. “I’m due back in the city tonight.” She gave him a pointed look. “Besides,” she said, “he’s in good hands.”

Kasamatsu flushed. 

Yamano patted his shoulder. “Good to meet you, kid. Don’t let them wear him out too much.” She stepped around him. 

“Yamano-san,” Kasamatsu said, and she stopped, raising an eyebrow at him. He licked his lips. “Thanks.”

She nodded and left, shouldering her way through the crowd.

+

The shoot took eight straight hours.

Approximately every hour and a half they’d change location—Kise went from standing on the steps to sitting at one of the round tables, “drinking” from a lowball glass (Kasamatsu wondered what was supposed to be in the glass—was Kise intended to be a very beautiful, very young-faced adult, in this scenario?) and showing off his ostentatious watch to leaning against the gorgeously carved railing of one of the balconies, the wind shifting through his hair, sunset colors playing over his face. Every time they shifted there was half an hour of taking down all the cameras and light-changing apparati and half an hour of setting them up again. The first time it happened Kasamatsu hovered at the edges of things, hoping to talk to Kise, but all he managed was a wave and a grimace as a different set of stylists assaulted him. After that he just—watched.

He could probably have left, explored the house some, or the rest of the grounds, but he didn’t. He lay down on the grass at the bottom of the steps and tried to nap. He did push ups, he went jogging around the whole set, but he didn’t leave.

He pulled out his notebook and sketched out half a plan for how to beat Fukuda Sogo before he got frustrated with his gaps in knowledge—he’d really meant to spend this time researching them rather than watching Kise minutely change his poses for a thousand years, but he’d been so flustered about this trip he’d forgotten to get any tapes of them playing or anything. He tried to google some stuff about them on his phone but all he got were stats about how much they’d won (a lot) and shocked reports of how intimidating the power of their forward, Shogo Haizaki, was (extremely). He also found a news report about Haizaki starting a bar fight and spending a night in jail for underage drinking and disorderly conduct.

He gave up. The guy wasn’t a member of the Generation of Miracles, and with Kise as on top of his game as he’d been lately they should be fine, even against an asshole like that.

Sunset had turned to real dusk when Kise was finally finished. The photographers snapped a few pictures against the big, globe-like lights lining the porch and then waved him away, apparently done with him, and Kise sagged in relief. Kasamatsu jumped up from where he’d been sitting improving his hand strength (the clicking had made a few photographers cast glares his way, but he’d been out here too long to care). They fought their way to each other through crowds of people just as exhausted as they were.

“Senpaiii,” Kise sighed, pulling him into a hug immediately, an exhausted, draping pile of long limbs and designer fabric, and Kasamatsu tried to return it normally and not freeze up, not think about how good Kise smelled. “I’m so sorry, usually they do a shoot in the morning and one in the afternoon with breaks between but then the train was late and we didn’t get here until after noon and they decided to just go straight through, which is not fair to you, and you should have gone to find something more interesting to do or—oh my god, have you even eaten anything?”

Kasamatsu scowled at him once Kise had pulled back enough to allow it. “I get that you haven’t been able to talk for like eight hours,” he said, “but please don’t tell me you’re going to be like this all night.”

Kise twitched a grin at him. “So that’s a no,” he said.

Kasamatsu shrugged. “Neither have you,” he pointed out.

“But I’m used to this,” Kise said tartly. He grabbed Kasamatsu by the wrist and tugged him over to the nearest group of people. “Hey,” he said, flashing them his paparazzi smile, “where can we get some food?”

They were directed to a door on the far side of the house that looked like some kind of breakfast room with attached kitchen—Kasamatsu guessed it was the only kitchen left operational for the off-season, and the smell of food hollowed out his stomach in an instant, leaving him swaying on his feet. Kise seemed in a similar state, and they served themselves quickly from a row of metal containers at the back of the room, and then Kise towed Kasamatsu to a table by a window.

Despite his first outpouring of words, Kise was pretty quiet, staring out at the night as they ate. Kasamatsu tried to read his face—tried to tell if he was pleased to be here, pleased with the day’s work, or if something was bothering him.

He remembered the press pass on his jacket, remembered Kise’s earlier joke. “So,” he said, putting down his cup and adopting a serious look. “What would you say is hardest part of being both a star athlete and a famous model?”

Kise blinked at him. Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows and pointed to his pass. If Kise didn’t play along, he’d know there was something wrong.

Kise blinked again, and then grinned, a slow, wry thing. “Well, you know—I just have no time for girls.”

Kasamatsu scowled at him, relieved. “Very funny.”

Leaning forward, Kise put his chin in his hand. “I’m serious,” he said. “I was supposed to meet up with Sakicchi two weeks ago and we couldn’t find the time.” He shook his head. “Poor girl.”

Kasamatsu raised an eyebrow at him. “She seemed pretty confident when I saw her last, maybe she’s asked that upperclassman out.”

Kise shook his head. “She can’t, not until our contract is up, and I don’t—I don’t want to have to go through the process again with someone else, I—“ he sighed and rubbed the spot between his eyes. “I’m tired of it.”

“Why don’t you come out?” Kasamatsu asked before he thought it through, and, belatedly, added a weak, “Off—off the record. Obviously.”

Kise stared at his food, and for a minute he thought he’d upset him—touched on something painful, unknowing. It wasn’t like they talked about it in so many words, Kise being gay, but he was in love with two boys and said that dating girls was performing so Kasamatsu had—figured it kind of followed. 

Finally Kise shrugged a little, though he didn’t look up. “I don’t want the attention.”

Kasamatsu snorted. “ _You_ don’t want the attention.”

That did make Kise look at him, a quick, darting glance through his bangs. “It would not all be positive attention, senpai.” 

There was something in his voice that drew Kasamatsu up short, something that said— _here, this is what you’ve been waiting for, the wall he won’t let you through._ Kise’d put up with his nosiness so far but this was where it ended.

Kasamatsu hated that; hated even more what it implied. He scowled, trying to figure out whether or not to press, when Kise opened his phone to check his texts and sighed. “Speaking of dubious attentions,” he muttered.

Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows at him.

Kise flipped his phone closed. “You know,” he said, “there was a time when I would have been ecstatic to have Aominecchi texting me every few days to try and get me to talk.” He stood up, abrupt. “Let’s go. We have training to do.”

He strode off, all his weariness shed, until Kasamatsu tripped him up and took the lead. “You don’t even know where you’re going,” he snapped when Kise gave him a wounded look.

He thought about that wall while he retrieved the gym bags he’d stowed next to the basketball court, while Kise stripped out of his model-clothes and into his jersey and shorts, thought about it as they jogged around edge of the court and warmed up. The night was cold but he didn’t want to bother checking the map for indoor courts and it was bright, at least—lit by the same huge white globes as the balconies. They buzzed, a little, in the silence.

Kise rolled his shoulders; the light flowed over his skin like water.

They ran drills for maybe an hour, practicing passes and drives and alley-oops, before Kasamatsu gave up on pretending Kise’s basics weren’t literally perfect and concentrated on improving his own skills by going up against him one-on-one. Kise played with a kind of pure concentration that Kasamatsu should have felt pleased about, but instead he was just—disquieted.

He’d always assumed Kise remained closeted out of a general kind of worry, a societal worry, concern for his career or his contracts, but—the way he’d closed himself off spoke of something else, some specific fear. Had he dealt with homophobia in the past? 

Had someone hurt him?

He shook off the thought—it made him too angry—and concentrated on trying to maybe score a single goddamn point.

When he finally managed—a three-pointer, as well, lofted just too high above Kise’s reaching fingers—he was so surprised he just stared at the net as it swished in the wake of the ball. Kise whistled—piercing, when the only sound had been their harsh breathing and little muttered taunts for hours—and went to retrieve the ball.

Kasamatsu folded over at the waist, letting his head and arms hang heavy. When he straightened up Kise was back in his space, staring at him warm and proud. “Nice shot.”

“Damn right,” Kasamatsu muttered. “You still shouldn’t have missed it, though.”

Kise cracked his neck, looking amused. “Sorry, senpai. I’m a little tired.”

Kasamatsu sighed. “Yeah, alright. Get a good night’s sleep, we can pick this up in the morning.”

Kise rubbed the back of his neck, apologetic. “Ah, sorry, no we can’t. I’m due on set at six.”

Kasamatsu glared at him in disbelief. “Why didn’t you fucking say something?” he snapped, knocking the basketball out of Kise’s grip and sending it bouncing away across the court. “You should have gone to bed hours ago. They probably _murder_ you if you look tired on set tomorrow!“

Kise glanced between the ball vanishing into the dark and at Kasamatsu. “But we need to practice,” he said, looking puzzled. “That’s the whole reason you’re here.”

Kasamatsu licked his lips. “Yeah,” he said, “but—but it won’t do the team any good if you come home so exhausted you can’t play at all.” He smacked Kise upside the head. “C’mon,” he said. “Bed.”

Kise saluted. “Yessir,” he said. “Um. Where?”

Kasamatsu blinked at him. “Right,” he said. He rummaged through his bag until he found the map that Yamano had given him, then lead the way out of the basketball court and into the dark.

“I can’t believe you stuck around for the whole shoot,” Kise said, after they’d been walking for a while. Kasamatsu’s breathing had slowed and his muscles were starting to ache, now that the adrenaline of matching up against Kise had faded. Kise bumped him with a shoulder. “Did I impress you, senpai, were you amazed by such an artist at work?”

His voice was teasing, was sarcastic, so Kasamatsu didn’t say _yes_ , swung a little too hard in the opposite direction. “What artist?” he asked instead. “All I saw was a rich kid who likes when people think he’s pretty.”

He must have misjudged Kise’s mood, because instead of pressing a hand to his heart in his fake-wounded way he went totally silent. Kasamatsu glanced at him, but his face was shadowed. He frowned, kicking himself. “Kise—“

“My looks are something I put a lot of time into,” Kise said quietly, “so I am pleased when that pays off.”

“I—“ Kasamatsu swallowed down _you look amazing all the time and you would even if you didn’t do anything at all_ and tried, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—“

Kise smiled sideways at him through his bangs, eyes a little sad. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know you think I’m stupid for caring about it,” he said. “It’s okay.”

Kasamatsu shook his head. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

Kise tucked his hands into his pockets and tilted his head up, looking at the sky. “For a long time,” he said, “my looks were the only reason I had friends at all.”

It was so casual—so simply stated—that it took a minute to sink in. When it did, Kasamatsu stopped walking. “You can’t really think that’s true.”

Kise paused, too, looking back at him with raised brows. “What? Of course it’s true.”

Kasamatsu scowled at him. “So, what, you were a total nonentity except for your looks, and then what happened, you learned to play basketball and just spontaneously grew all your other qualities, all at once, boom?”

Kise laughed, a little, but it trailed off when Kasamatsu didn’t join him. “I mean,” he said slowly, “I—I went to Teiko and I met everyone there and they liked me because I was good at basketball, and now I’m at Kaijo and you guys like me for the same reason.” He paused. “Except girls, they still like me for my looks.” He wrinkled his nose. “Maybe for how good I look _playing_ basketball.”

“I don’t like you because you’re good at basketball,” Kasamatsu said, immediate and unthinking.

Kise stared at him. “What?”

Kasamatsu scowled harder at him to cover the steady stream of panicked curses running through his head. “Would you fucking listen when I speak to you?” he snapped, and jogged a few steps so they were walking side by side again. “I said I’m not friends with you because you’re good at basketball, idiot,” he said, although—he hadn’t, quite. “Basketball is how I know you, but it’s not why we’re friends.”

He stared hard at the dark and dared Kise to ask, but he just said, “oh,” quietly, like Kasamatsu had told him something new and unbelievable. 

“Yeah,” said Kasamatsu grumpily. “So shut the fuck up for once.”

Kise did, and they finished the walk in silence, finding their way across an ornamental bridge and through a series of gardens to a set of steps. The moon was up, so bright Kasamatsu could read his map by it, and he felt—displaced. His nap on the train and the eight straight hours of standing around in the sun in a place that looked like a movie set had jostled him free of reality altogether. It wasn’t really a bad feeling. He took a breath of cold night air, leading Kise up the steps and along a long porch. The moonlight glinted off the surface of a pool below them and the night robbed everything of its color. He couldn’t really imagine feeling bad, here; everything was too still, too beautiful.

At his side, Kise was a thing built of moonlight itself, the gold of his hair and the gold of his eyes faded to the same paper paleness as his skin. Kasamatsu watched him out of the corner of his eye. _You’re here because he wants you here_ , Yamano had said; he wanted to grab Kise and thank him for that, for his trust and for this place, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch—couldn’t even bring himself to break the perfect silence stretching tangibly between them.

They finally reached the door marked on the map. Kasamatsu slid the key into the lock and opened the door, dumping his gym bag inside before he looked around at the room.

It was big and clean and as beautifully furnished as the rest of the place, with what looked like real flowers on the side table and two full-length mirrors and dark wooden panels on those walls that weren’t delicately patterned paper. The upholstery on the chair and the paintings on the walls were all carefully chosen off a palette of pale yellows and steadily deepening greens, with the darkest color—intentionally placed, to draw the eye—being the forest green of the lush, incredibly comfortable-looking bedspread.

Singular. On the equally singular, although admittedly quite large, bed.

“Oh my god,” said Kise, guilty, mortified. “Yamano-san is in charge of all of the arrangements—I didn’t tell her you were coming so she didn’t—and then she must have forgotten to change it, senpai, I’m so sorry, this has to be a mistake.“

“Has to be,” Kasamatsu echoed, though privately he doubted that Yamano-san had forgotten anything in her life and that if she’d had the foresight to get him a press pass she definitely would have had the foresight to change their room, had she wanted to. He rubbed his face with his hands and remembered her little sardonic smile. 

The world _hated_ him.

“I’m so sorry,” Kise said again. “I’ll call the manager, we’ll get a new room—“

“Kise,” Kasamatsu said, cutting him off. “It’s nearly two AM, don’t be an asshole.”

“Um,” said Kise, “O-okay, then, then I’ll sleep on the f—“

Kasamatsu made a decision in the time it took to elbow him in the stomach. “Stop suggesting stupid bullshit,” he said. “The bed is fucking huge, we could probably fit four of us in there.” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “Four of me, maybe only three of you. We’ll barely notice.” He sighed, turning to look at Kise fully. “We’ll talk to someone in the morning, get it changed then. Okay?”

Kise had his eyes on the floor. “Yeah,” he said, and looked up, smiling a little. “Okay,” and he raised a hand to run it over the back of his head and neck.

Kasamatsu caught his wrist. “Would you stop _doing_ that?”

Kise blinked at him. “Senpai?”

“The stupid—“ he imitated Kise’s neck-rub with the hand not looped around his wrist, “—thing. You do it when you’re embarrassed, like you’re trying to settle your goddamn feathers. You don’t have to make yourself smaller for me, okay?” He let Kise go and stalked over to the bed, kicking off his shoes.

He felt Kise’s eyes on him as he pulled off his shirt, and glanced at him. “ _What?_ ”

Kise was staring at him, his hand still hovering where Kasamatsu had stopped it. When Kasamatsu glared he went a little pink. “N-nothing,” he said, and lowered it. “Just—thanks.”

Kasamatsu shrugged. Kise kept watching him for a minute and then seemed to blink himself awake. “Right,” he said, and crossed to his own luggage.

Kasamatsu carefully didn’t watch him change, calling dibs on the bathroom to brush his teeth and splash water on his face and stare at himself in the mirror because he was about to share a bed with Kise and none of the things he’d said before were any less true than when he said them but—even fucking _so_. He sighed and glared into his own eyes. Why the hell did he do this to himself?

He left the bathroom. Kise smiled at him as he passed, a quick, almost nervous grin that made Kasamatsu feel a little better. He wasn’t the only one a little uncomfortable with this, albeit not for the same reasons. He wondered if Kise had ever shared a bed with anyone—his own childhood was peppered with sleepovers with various friends, either on his own too-small futon or on theirs, and he was used to waking up in a sweaty pile with someone else’s hair in his mouth.

Most of those friends had moved on, though, to college or jobs—Kasamatsu had always made friends easier with people older than him—and anyway this was, this was different for a lot of reasons. Kise was the exception to a lot of rules.

He pulled on a pair of pajama pants and chose the side of the bed closest to the wall, curling up there with his back to the room. After a minute he turned over. He didn’t want Kise to think he was upset with him, just—establish some boundaries. He closed his eyes.

He was more tired than he thought; he didn’t even notice Kise coming back from the bathroom or turning off the light, but woke with a start when the bed dipped and Kise slipped under the covers with him. His toes brushed Kasamatsu’s leg and he whispered an embarrassed, “sorry!” and then settled down, facing him.

The moon crept in through a gap in the curtains, casting a pale stripe of light across the bed. It bridged the gap between them, falling across Kise’s wrist where it lay, palm up, and then diagonally up to his closed eyelid and his brow. He’d taken off his makeup entirely and Kasamatsu saw that his eyelashes were as pale as his hair, his face clear and open and young, and he wanted to get up and turn on the light so he could look at him properly, see him as he was behind all of the layers.

He swallowed. Had Kuroko ever seen this side of Kise, this silent, unguarded boy who frowned slightly as he tried to sleep and worried about why people liked him and took his place at center stage like he was born for it, the boy who could be all of that at once without contradicting himself, who curled up small and unobtrusive but still drew the attention of anything and everything, even the moon? 

Had Aomine?

“Kise,” he said softly.

Kise opened his eyes.

“Why was it so important you beat Aomine?”

Kise shifted, a little; Kasamatsu saw the surprise in his eyes and then a kind of weird resignation. “Because it’s what he needs,” he said, just as softly. Kasamatsu resisted the urge to move closer. “Aominecchi needs—a rival, a real rival who can give him something to strive against. And I used to think I could be that for him. I used to think I could be anything anyone needed me to be.”

Kasamatsu frowned at him. “That’s stupid,” he said. “Just be who _you_ need to be.”

To his surprise, Kise frowned right back, his eyebrows drawing together sharply. “Sure,” he said, just as quietly but his voice shifting sarcastic. “Yeah, no problem. You want to tell me how?”

Kasamatsu blinked at him. “What?”

Kise flopped over on his back. “It’s all very well and good to say shit like _be true to yourself_ , senpai,” he said to the ceiling, “but did you ever stop and think that maybe I have no clue what that means?” He sighed. “You know, basketball isn’t even the thing I’m good at. Not really. Basketball is the thing I try hardest at, because I love it and I love the people who love it but what I’m really good at is—faking it.” He stretched his hands up to the ceiling, fingers spread wide. “Of course I’m going to try and be what people need,” he said, “because I _know_ what people need. I can see it, you know? I can—reflect it.” He let his arms fall. “But I can’t look at me like that.” He rolled over again to look at Kasamatsu. “Can you? Can you tell me who I’m supposed to be, if it’s not any of the things I’ve been trying to be for years?”

His face was expectant, in the dark, expectant and resigned and a little bit truly hopeful, like he thought Kasamatsu might be able to just nod and say _yeah, I know exactly who you need to be_. Kasamatsu sighed. “Nobody can,” he said quietly, “but you already know that.”

The corner of Kise’s mouth turned up, but it wasn’t really a smile.

Kasamatsu did scoot a little closer, then; wanted to offer a little support, even if he didn’t have the answers Kise needed. “You know you don’t have to know this, though,” he continued. “We’re young, you know? We’re all figuring this shit out together, that’s what high school’s for.”

Kise wrinkled his nose at him. “You never seem like you’re figuring anything out,” he said ruefully. “We’re always talking about my stupid overdramatic problems and you’re all like—“ he shifted his face, tightening his jaw and somehow squaring off his brow, “—get over yourself, suck it up, just be yourself, don’t make yourself smaller.”

Kasamatsu poked him between the eyes to get his brows back to normal. “That’s a terrible impression, I don’t look anything like that.”

Kise looked at him levelly. “Senpai,” he said. “Did we not just finish talking about how impressions are the only thing I’m good at?”

Kasamatsu’s lips twitched. “Shut up.”

Kise grinned at him, and Kasamatsu wanted to lean in and press his thumb to the corner of his smile, keep it on his face forever. “I think you know yourself better than you think you do,” he said instead.

Kise raised his eyebrows at him. “How come?”

Kasamatsu traced his fingers along the edge of the stripe of moonlight between them, suddenly nervous. “Well,” he said. “You know—knowing about Kuroko and Aomine.”

Kise blinked. “That’s different,” he said. “Emotions and stuff. I know what I’m feeling, doesn’t everybody?”

Kasamatsu raised a shoulder in a shrug, not looking at his face. “Not everybody—knows what to do about it.”

Kise mirrored his shrug. “You just do what you want.”

“It’s all very well and good to say shit like _just do what you want_ , Kise,” Kasamatsu mocked, his voice coming out a little thick despite his best efforts.

Kise laughed at him. Kasamatsu could feel his breath, now, against his knuckles, and he slid his hand up the band of light to Kise’s wrist, trailing the tips of his fingers over the tendons there, over his pulse-point. He closed his eyes, letting their hands rest together, palm to palm, his heart beating almost painfully hard in his chest.

Kise’s hand was warm. After a breathless moment, he folded their fingers together tight.

+

Kasamatsu dreamed of hands. He dreamed Kise trailed gentle fingertips up his arm to his shoulder, tracing little circles across the nape of his neck and down his spine, dreamed he drew patterns in the small of his back that lingered even after his touch had moved on, dreamed he arched in response, like a bow being drawn, needy, trembling. He dreamed warm, lazy caresses, the curious slide of a thumb along his hipbone, the teasing flicker of fingers dipping lower—

He woke up, shaky, turned on, to a world filled with light.

The curtains—probably on some kind of automated timer—had risen, and the room was sunlit and gorgeous, the plant-greens and light yellows perfectly chosen to evoke a glorious spring morning, even now in the midst of the world’s inexorable slide into winter. And next to him—almost artfully composed, a bloom of blond against the green—Kise slept.

He’d shifted closer in the night, one of his arms flung across Kasamatsu’s hip. He’d pulled their joined hands closer, too, curled around them, and his mouth was resting slack against Kasamatsu’s knuckles. His hair was mussed and his face smooth and open as he slept and his lips were soft and his breath ghosted warm across Kasamatsu’s skin and Kasamatsu—god, Kasamatsu might never move again, might just stay here in this perfect squirming lightness for the rest of his _life_.

But—but the light looked too much like real morning for his liking, and right on cue Kise’s phone split the silence, the force of the alarm vibrating it off the side table and onto the floor. 

Kasamatsu was about to carefully disentangle his fingers from Kise’s when he opened his eyes. He blinked at Kasamatsu—too close, why hadn’t he moved away immediately—and then smiled against the back of his hand, curling and pleased. “Hi,” he said.

Kasamatsu swallowed hard. “H-hi.”

Kise sat up, letting go of Kasamatsu’s hand like he never even realized he was holding it, and rolled over to grab his phone off the floor, hanging half off the bed. He lay like that while he flipped it open to check the time, the long, muscled expanse of his back to Kasamatsu, awash in sunlight. His pajama pants were riding low on his hips and Kasamatsu could still feel the shape of his smile and his dreams were still clouding his skull and he really actually. _Couldn’t_ leave the bed, not without horribly embarrassing himself forever. He bunched the blankets up around his lap, gnawing at the inside of his cheek.

“You know, senpai,” Kise said, still hanging halfway to the floor, “you don’t really need to be up—you saw me do this so much yesterday, and it’s still early.”

Kasamatsu nearly bit his tongue in his relief. “Yeah,” he said, maybe a little too quickly. “Besides, I have at least an hour of them smearing shit all over your face, right?”

Kise laughed. It made the muscles of his back tighten, the dimples above his ass deepen. “Probably more,” he admitted while Kasamatsu sucked his lower lip into his mouth and tried not to imagine leaning down over him, pressing himself all along Kise’s back—

Kise twisted, pulling himself back onto the bed with the strength of his stomach muscles alone and Kasamatsu curled into a panicked ball, trying to school his face into something normal before Kise saw him staring. “Great,” he muttered. “Th-then I might as well sleep more.”

Kise looked down at him, his face fond. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll text you where we’re shooting once we are.”

Kasamatsu nodded, hoping he was too buried in sheets for Kise to notice the redness of his cheeks. He shut his eyes. After a long moment he felt Kise’s hand in his hair, ruffling it; he made a noise and swatted him away. “Get off, idiot,” he grumbled, meaning _never stop touching me_ , meaning _I like you too much for this_ , meaning _we held hands all night and I don’t know if that means anything or if I want it to or what it would if it did._

“So mean, senpai,” Kise sighed, but the bed shifted as he climbed out of it. Kasamatsu kept his eyes closed while he dressed, kept them closed until he heard the door slide shut behind him, pressing the heels of his hands against his thighs and trying desperately not to think about anything at all.  


He tried, at first, to actually sleep; tried to will his erection away by thinking about—about _literally anything else_ , this hadn’t ever been a problem before, he was usually pretty able to control this shit—but. _Fuck._  


He let out a shaky sigh and gave up, rolling out of bed and into the shower.  


He intended to just rinse yesterday’s sweat off himself and then switch to cold to deal with his—issue—but the water pressure was amazing, massaging the aches from his bones, and he found himself running his hands up and down his chest, breathing harsh in the steam. He steadied himself against the wall and gave in, focused firmly on thinking only about his own hands, thinking only about here, now, what this felt like, the water slaking over his shoulders, the heady weight of his dick in his hand. He worked himself steadily and quickly, not letting his mind slip outside the confines of the glass-walled shower, not letting himself think about—Kise, coming back, having forgotten something, Kise finding him like his, spread-legged and shaking, Kise slipping to his knees and pressing that soft, smiling mouth against Kasamatsu’s knuckles again while he jacked himself off—  


He came with a strangled grunt, shaking and ashamed. Blowing water droplets from his lips, he shoved his hands across his eyes, up into his hair, the incredible mood he’d been in when he woke up slipping quickly down the drain. Who the fuck did he think he was, to spend so much time being angry with Aomine for not respecting Kise, for objectifying him, for treating him like he was just there to be _desired_ , when he—he.  


He flipped the shower to cold and angrily scrubbed himself clean.  


+  


He stopped by the kitchen where they’d eaten the night before to grab himself a pastry and some tea, took another of each with him as he followed Kise’s directions towards one of the ornamental pools they’d passed on the way to their room. 

Today’s shoot was set up at the water’s edge. When Kasamatsu got there the photographer seemed to be deep in argument with his assistant. Kise was lounging at the edge of the pool looking bored. If yesterday he’d been embodying the young, western-style nouveau riche today he was some kind of indolent lordling, decked out in traditional style with a short-sleeved haori jacket over a longer kimono, both of subtle, beautiful blue and grey patterns, the design on the himo tied around his waist (cinching the fabric close so it flared again at his hips) a mountain scene with highlights of a deep red reminiscent of the maples overhanging the pool at his back. Kasamatsu snuck to the edges of the set and cleared his throat; when Kise saw him he smiled and pushed himself to his sandaled feet.

His hair was pinned up—away from his face, which despite his claims that morning they’d left relatively clean—and if it weren’t for the breadth of his shoulders and the fact that the jacket and the kimono were pinned at the elbow, leaving his muscled forearms bare, he would have looked quite feminine. As it was, it was just—masculinity shifted sideways, or maybe backward in time, masculinity reframed as intricate, as beautiful. Kasamatsu worked his tongue around in his mouth as he watched him approach.

When Kise was close enough to hear him, he squinted, uncomfortable, guilty. “I’m not sure I understand the theme of these photoshoots,” he said. “Is there a theme? Are they just showing this place off?” _Are they just showing you off?_

Kise wrinkled his nose at him. “I didn’t ask, to be honest.” He sighed and turned to look at the photographer. “I think we’re almost done here,” he said. “They’re doing things more sanely today and another couple models are supposed to be here soon, so I won’t be needed back until late afternoon.” He turned to look back at Kasamatsu. “We’ve got time to prove you made that shot last night through your own skill, senpai.”

Kasamatsu scowled at him. “We won’t prove anything,” he protested, “not with you on like four hours of sleep.”

Kise’s eyes were warm. “They were good hours, though,” he said, and then the photographer shouted, “Kise-kun!!” and he was turning away in a flurry of fabric and knotted cord, leaving Kasamatsu blinking in his wake.

He watched Kise take his seat again, watched him trail his fingers through the water, watched him gaze dreamily into the distance—once, disconcertingly, straight at him, and when the photographer paused to readjust something he smirked and winked. Kasamatsu flipped him off, and Kise started laughing.

The photographer started to snap something, and then actually looked up from what he was doing and went silent. Quickly, with the absolute focus of a hunter who’s seen unwitting prey, he raised his camera free-form and took several shots of Kise’s loose-shouldered laugh, the way he shook his hair out of his eyes as he subsided, raising his head with his lip caught between his teeth. When he noticed he was being photographed he schooled himself into something more composed, and the photographer muttered something that sounded very much like, ”god dammit,” and put his camera back on his tripod.

He strode over to Kasamatsu, who blinked at him, suddenly anxious. It was the tall man from the day before—the one with the clipboard that Kise had been arguing with—and he was even more imposing from about six inches away. He looked Kasamatsu over with a sneer, his eyes lingering disbelievingly on his press pass. “Who the hell are you?”

“Uh,” said Kasamatsu, swallowing, “Kasamatsu Yukio, I’m a, a friend of Kise’s.”

“Right,” said the tall man like he’d never heard anything he cared about less in his life. “C’mere.” He gestured Kasamatsu over behind the camera, positioning him facing Kise, who was watching them, looking puzzled. “Now, make him laugh.”

Kasamatsu frowned. “Excuse me?”

The tall man waved a hand at him, turning back to his cameras. “Make him laugh,” he said again. “He’s been goddamn wooden and distracted all morning, but he lit the fuck up when you did whatever you just did, so I don’t know, do it again.”

When Kasamatsu just stared at him, he sighed. “Kid. Listen. Dolls in nice clothes don’t sell magazines. People wanna see people they wanna be, and that includes happy. You wanna do whatever you’re actually here for? Make him laugh, let me get another four, five shots of a pretty boy living a pretty life, and you can go.”

Kasamatsu looked from him to Kise, who was raising his eyebrows. Kasamatsu shrugged at him and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey!” he yelled. “Laugh!”

The photographer sighed; Kise looked puzzled. “What?” he called back.

Kasamatsu scowled, annoyed. What the fuck was he supposed to do, tell jokes? “I said laugh, asshole, I thought I told you to listen!”

Kise did look a little like he wanted to laugh, but mostly he still looked confused. “Senpai—“

Kasamatsu grit his teeth and threw the pastry he’d been saving for him at his head. “Laugh, you piece of shit, and then we can play basketball!”

The pastry sailed through the air, bounced off the center of Kise’s forehead, and ricocheted into the ornamental pool, where a few beautiful koi fish started nibbling at it. Kasamatsu put his head in his hands, but heard—after a long, startled pause—Kise start to laugh.

He raised his head. The photographer had his camera up again: Kise had a fist pressed to his mouth, his eyes cinched tight-shut with mirth. The sunlight gleamed off the now-shifting surface of the pool behind him, casting ripples of light across his skin and hair, and he was absolutely the most beautiful thing Kasamatsu had ever seen.

“Thanks,” the photographer said absently. “We’ll edit the pastry out in post.”

+

“Sorry you got roped into that,” Kise said once he was free of his ornate costume. He’d left his hair pinned up—an easy way to keep it out of his eyes—and there was a spot of strawberry jam in the middle of his forehead. If this were a movie, Kasamatsu would have reached up and pulled him down, taken it off him with a kiss.

He handed Kise his tea. “There’s jam on your forehead,” he said.

Kise took the tea with wide eyes. “Senpai, you’re an _angel_ ,” he said, and made no move to do anything at all about the jam.

Kasamatsu rolled his eyes. “I should’ve kicked you into that pond,” he muttered. “That would’ve sold some magazines.”

Kise gave him a mock-shocked look. “And ruin all that expensive clothing that will never be worn again by anyone for anything?” he asked, his voice tinged with horror. “You couldn’t!”

Kasamatsu punched him in the back of the head, just to have something to do with all his limbs. “Food,” he said, “real food, and then we’ll go figure out how to beat that Haizaki guy.”

Kise stopped walking. At first Kasamatsu figured he was just tying a shoe or something, but he kept going a few paces and Kise didn’t catch up, so he turned. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at him, eyes huge in his face. Kasamatsu frowned. “Kise?”

“H-Haizaki,” Kise said, a little faintly. “Shogo Haizaki?”

Kasamatsu shifted his shoulders against the weight of both bags, annoyed. “Yeah,” he said. “He plays for Fukuda Sogo.”

Kise caught up to him in two strides, was past him in another two. “I shouldn’t be here,” he was saying as Kasamatsu jogged to catch him up. “I should never have come here, why am I wasting my time on this _shit_ when we’re going up against him, why didn’t you tell me—“

“Tell you what?” Kasamatsu asked, baffled. “Kise, what the hell—“

“I can’t face him like this,” Kise continued, clearly not listening. “I haven’t trained enough, we’re going to lose because I haven’t trained enough—“

“Kise!” Kasamatsu snapped, and grabbed his hand as he raised it to run it through his hair, panicked. Kise swung around so he was facing him, eyes a little wild, and Kasamatsu caught his gaze and held it. “What the fuck is wrong with you, why are you freaking out about this?”

Kise met his eyes and seemed to calm, a little. He licked his lips. “Shogo Haizaki went to Teiko.”

Kasamatsu stared at him. “What? No he didn’t. Not as a starter, not as one of you.”

Kise shook his head. “Would’ve been,” he said. “Was, before I joined.”

“So you’re better,” Kasamatsu pointed out. “Right? If you replaced him, if he never became one of the Generation of Miracles—“

But Kise was still shaking his head. “Akashicchi kicked him out,” he said. “He—“ he gnawed at his lip. “I’ve. Never beaten him.”

Kasamatsu searched his face. Kise avoided his eyes, staring down at their joined hands instead, and Kasamatsu was reminded suddenly and with a shock of clarity of the wall that had gone up behind his eyes the day before. “It’s more than that,” he said quietly. “Something happened.”

“Something happened,” Kise confirmed. He took a breath, and then let it out in what was almost a laugh. “He—stole my first girlfriend.”

Kasamatsu pulled him over to a bench. After a minute Kise sat, and Kasamatsu sat next to him, their hands still clasped. “He stole your girlfriend,” he repeated, disbelieving.

Kise looked at him sideways. “My _first_ girlfriend,” he said. “That’s—the part that matters, because it was before I figured out I could use the fact that girls wanted to date me because of my looks to benefit me professionally. I just used it to have friends. Or. I thought she was my friend, I trusted her enough to talk to her about—you know, the stuff that a middle school boy rapidly figuring out that he’s gay needs to talk about.”

Kasamatsu did know—had been that boy—but the thought of explicitly admitting such to Kise made him feel nauseous with anxiety and this wasn’t the time, anyway. Instead he just nodded, and then suddenly realized where this was going. “She told Haizaki.”

Kise nodded, letting out a shaky breath. “She told Haizaki, and.” Kise swallowed. “He beat the shit out of me,” he admitted, dispassionate. “Just once—Akashicchi wasn’t about to tolerate it more than that, but. It, ah. It was enough.”

Kasamatsu felt sick down to his bones, felt hot and cold and _furious_. He was standing up before he’d made the conscious decision to move. “Kise,” he said, hearing his own voice coming from far away. 

Kise looked up at him, surprised.

“Let’s go practice.” Kasamatsu held out a hand. “We’re going to _destroy_ him.” 

+

“Watch,” said Kise, as if Kasamatsu had been doing anything else.

It was early afternoon and they were both already soaked with sweat. Kise was more centered than Kasamatsu had seen him a long time, all of his uncertainty and fear channeled into a kind of whip-sharp focus that made Kasamatsu’s blood hum in his veins.  


“Remember,” Kise’d said when they’d started this new kind of practice, “he’s me but worse, so to win I have to be everyone else.”

It had made no sense at first; now, an hour or so in, as he watched Kise shift his sneakers against the court, as he stared at the changing set of his shoulders, he thought he might be starting to understand.

“Aomine,” he guessed, but there was a looseness to the power Kise was pulling into himself, something rougher around the edges, and he shook his head before Kise could. “No,” he corrected himself, “Kagami.”

Kise grinned at him, wolfish, and then relaxed. “Right,” he said. “Good.” 

He shook out all of his limbs and then drew himself upward and inward, honing himself like a blade, and Kasamatsu had it before he even finished the motion. “Midorima.”

Kise nodded again.

This was, Kasamatsu was pretty sure, not exactly what Coach had had in mind when he said _improve your coordination_ , but it wouldn’t be enough for Kise to be able to perfectly copy the moves of his old teammates and opponents. They’d already proven that Kise did not, after all, work best alone (Kise had laughed, said, “Kurokocchi’s basketball,” under his breath, and then just shook his head when Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows). The rest of the team—which meant Kasamatsu—had to be able to read which moves he was planning on using and formulate their plays around him, which meant knowing what he was going to do pretty much as soon as he did, which meant being able to read his body language absolutely perfectly.

Kise took a breath and somehow expanded outward, his limbs and shoulders and hips squaring up. Kasamatsu almost had to step backward out of his way, although he hadn’t moved—his presence was growing. “Murasakibara,” he said as Kise started to raise one hand, somehow too-large on the end of his arm.

Kise nodded, and relaxed.

They kept it up all day, until Kasamatsu could recognize all of the Generation of Miracles (excepting, of course, Kuroko, who Kise couldn’t imitate), Kagami, Kiyoshi Iron Heart from Seirin, Takao, and Himuro Tatsuya. Kise had a quick photoshoot late in the afternoon with a couple other models; Kasamatsu paid it very little attention, sketching out instead various strategic possibilities now that he had, effectively, eight or nine extra star players, although only one at once. When Kise was done with the shoot they had dinner and then continued to practice, cutting down the time it took for Kasamatsu to recognize who Kise was copying and working out the most effective combinations of people for Kise to be.

By the time they got back to their room Kasamatsu was so tired it didn’t even occur to him that anything might be slipping his mind until Kise stopped just inside the door and said, “Oh, I–I can call someone. About the bed.”

He pulled out his phone and Kasamatsu’s stomach twisted. “It’s just one more night,” he said, not looking at Kise. “I don’t really mind.”

“Yeah?” asked Kise, and he sounded—relieved, maybe a little pleased. “Neither do I.”

Kasamatsu looked sideways at him, too drained to be subtle; found Kise looking back, blinking slow. He swallowed. “Kise—“

Kise’s phone buzzed in his hand. He glanced at it and the corners of his mouth twisted downward. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he said, abrupt; he tossed his phone on the bed and shut himself in the bathroom.

Kasamatsu ran a hand over his face, walked outside, and punched the wall hard enough to bruise.

+

Kise’s phone buzzed again while he was in the shower and, his guilt overwhelmed by curiosity, Kasamatsu flipped it open.

Kise had eight new texts. 

Five of them were from Aomine—spaced about an hour apart, first just his name several times, and then _kise come on, then where the hell are you_ and lastly _you’d better be dead in a ditch somewhere because otherwise answer your GODDAMN texts._ Kasamatsu swallowed and refused to let himself scroll up in that conversation. 

Two of the texts were from Kuroko (“Kurokocchi!!!<3” in Kise’s phone), one of them said _kise-kun, please stop ignoring aomine-kun_ , and then another, recently, _seriously I really think you guys should talk._

The last text, the one that just arrived, was from “Momomomomoicchii” and all it said was _ki-chan._

Period included. “ _ki-chan_.” like an invocation, like a scolding, like a summons.

The water cut off in the bathroom and Kasamatsu hurriedly flipped the phone closed and put it back where he’d found it, rolling to the far side of the bed and lying there staring at the ceiling. He wished—he wished this wasn’t just for one more night, wished he could keep Kise here where he didn’t have to deal with any of his old friends and the complicated feelings they brought with them, where he could just do the things he was good at with people who appreciated him. But that was selfish, too—Kise maybe had a real chance at happiness if he would let Aomine in, a happiness he’d been waiting for for years, and it was selfish to want to keep him here where all he had was—was Kasamatsu.

Kise came out of the bathroom shirtless, toweling off his hair, and Kasamatsu kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I think your phone went off.”

Kise sighed. “I’d turn it off if it wasn’t also my alarm clock.”

Kasamatsu licked his lips. “You don’t think you should talk to him?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

“Senpai,” Kise said, and Kasamatsu looked at him. He had his towel around his neck, his hair a damp tangle around his face. Water droplets slid down his jaw. He met Kasamatsu’s eyes and held them, gaze steady. “Don’t.”

Kasamatsu frowned at him. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he said, but he didn’t bring it up again, turning onto his side and closing his eyes. He let his hand rest on the sheets next to him, palm up.

Kise climbed into bed a few minutes later and reached out, unhesitating, to hold his hand.

+

There was a last morning photo shoot in the breakfast room they’d been eating at all weekend and then in what seemed like no time at all it was over—they were piling back into the train car, Kise taking the seat next to Kasamatsu rather than across from him, and sliding away from the mountain and across the plains. Kasamatsu stared out the window. The sky was greying over, as if color were a thing for the mountains and the world was preparing them again for the monochrome of city life.

“I can’t believe I have to go to school tomorrow,” he said into the silence.

Kise shifted, laying his head against his shoulder, and Kasamatsu took a breath, his heart picking up. For a long time Kise said nothing at all, and then he said softly, “Kasamacchi.”

Kasamatsu swallowed, staring at his knees. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for coming with me,” Kise said in the same soft voice. “It—it was really different. Good different. Having you there.”

Kasamatsu flicked him in the ear that wasn’t resting against him so it was clear he wasn’t trying to get Kise to move. “I told you not to call me that,” he grumbled, and then, careful, “and. You’re welcome.”

It was—so much less than he meant, the tiniest tip of the huge goddamn iceberg of what he meant, the tiniest tip on the furthermost outcropping of the enormous asshole glacier of what he meant but—Kise made a little pleased noise and curled further into his side, so maybe it was enough, anyway.

He walked Kise home—not even particularly consciously, that was the weirdest and worst part was that they didn’t even talk about it, they just got in to the station and Kise started toward his apartment and Kasamatsu fell in beside him and that was how it was, and it wasn’t like it made that much of a difference—like a true rich kid Kise lived near the train station and Kasamatsu could double back once they’d—whatever, said their goodbyes, or. Something similar that sounded less ridiculous considering they’d be seeing each other in less than 24 hours anyway. 

When they reached his floor Kise slowed, and Kasamatsu turned to see what he was looking at.

There was a girl leaning against his door. At first Kasamatsu thought it might Saki, but then he caught sight of the pink hair escaping her white beanie and Kise made a surprised, pleased noise. “Momoicchi,” he said happily, coming forward to greet her. 

She grinned at him and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Ki-chan, hey,” she said, and then gave Kasamatsu a nod. “Kasamatsu-kun.”

“Momoi-san,” he said, nodding back, and then glanced up at Kise, who was standing stock still in the wake of her kiss. His face had gone from purely pleased to something a little bit sadder and infinitely more tender, his attention fixed somewhere beyond Momoi. “Kurokocchi,” he said quietly. “Hello.”

Kuroko—suddenly in the doorway, wrapped in a coat that covered him from his nose to the tips of his fingers—raised his chin so they could see him smile, slight and a little bit solemn. “Kise-kun,” he said. “Can we talk?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHA SORRY there's another chapter
> 
> this chapter subtitled "how many times can i describe how beautiful kasamatsu thinks kise is" and the answer is: a lot
> 
> (a fun note - if you've read _[A Brother In Arms](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3306077)_ , you may note a certain similarity between Kasamatsu's fantasy about Kise when he's in the shower here and Kise's fantasy about Aomine in that fic - they're very sexually compatible, is what I'm sayin'.)
> 
> next up: confrontations? basketball games?? aomine??? kissing????


	3. Chapter 3

At first Kasamatsu thought Kise might say no. He looked back and forth between Kuroko and Momoi, his face unreadable, and then he sagged a little. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, okay.”

He started unlocking his door. Kasamatsu touched his elbow to get his attention, ignoring the others. “Kise,” he said when Kise looked at him, his lips pinched tight together. “You want me to go?”

Kise bit his lip, thinking about it, and then shook his head. “Stay,” he said. “A bit, at least.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but his eyes slid sideways to Kuroko and he didn’t, just brushed his fingers over Kasamatsu’s wrist as he turned back to his task.

Kasamatsu just nodded and followed him into his apartment.

Both Momoi and Kuroko seemed immediately at home, tucking their shoes away with the ease of long habit. Kuroko peeled himself out of his huge coat and Kise took it from him with a smile, hanging it in his hall closet. “I could believe that Momoicchi was here because she misses me,” he said, his voice heavy with irony, “but both of you means only one thing.” He closed the closet and turned, his smile gone bitter. “Was Kagami too busy to come too?” 

“Kise-kun,” Kuroko said, his voice chiding.

Kasamatsu nearly snapped at him—if Kise was bitter it was _entirely_ fucking justified—but he settled for perching on the arm of Kise’s couch and glaring.

Kise shook his head, looking from Kuroko to Momoi. “For that matter, I’m surprised Aominecchi’s not here himself,” he said. “It’s not like him to send negotiators.”

Momoi smiled at him, though it was a little tired, a little sad. “He doesn’t know we’re here,” she said. “That’s where Kagami comes in, keeping him distracted.”

“If he _was_ here,” Kuroko said flatly, “you wouldn’t be talking to us.”

Kise ran a hand through his hair, some of the tension in his frame easing. “True,” he admitted. He sighed. “I apologize. I’ve just gotten home and I—“ he glanced at Kasamatsu. “Wasn’t expecting this.”

Kasamatsu swallowed, because—what _had_ he been expecting?

Momoi tucked her hands in her back pockets, entirely unsympathetic. “If you were answering your texts, we wouldn’t be here.” She, too, cast a glance Kasamatsu’s way; he tried to stare her down, but looked away when she raised a knowing eyebrow. “Are you trying to move on,” she said, turning back to Kise, “or are you trying to run away?”

Kise gave her an exhausted look. “Are they different?”

“Yes,” said Kuroko firmly. He sat down on the end of the couch closest to Kasamatsu but didn’t look at him, his eyes following Kise as he went to stow his gym bag in the corner. “Trust me, Kise-kun. It took me a while to know the difference, but there is one.”

Kise straightened up and sighed. “Yeah, well,” he said. “It was different for you, wasn’t it.”

“You don’t know that,” Kuroko said softly. “You don’t know what Aomine wants to say, because you won’t let him.”

Kise shoved a hand into his hair, and Kasamatsu saw anger dawn in his eyes, tugged upwards by hopelessness and exhaustion. “It doesn’t matter,” Kise snapped. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what he has to say!” He took a breath. “Even if he loves me, even if I’ve been wrong all these years, it won’t fucking _matter_. I can’t be what I’ve always wanted to be to him.”

Momoi cocked her head at him. “What? Why not?”

Kise glared at her. “Because Kagami already is!”

Kasamatsu swallowed hard. Next to him, Kuroko went very still, breathed, “Kise-kun.”

Kise cast a despairing look his way. “Kurokocchi. Don’t try to tell me I’m wrong. I’ve seen how Kagami touches him. I’ve seen the way he watches Kagami play.” He cocked his head. “You must be pleased, that your loves have found love in each other, too.”

Kuroko said nothing, but Kasamatsu saw the bob of his throat.

“I know you’re here because you care,” Kise continued, then seemed to lose the thread of his thought, or maybe the courage to complete it.

Kuroko nodded. “You—sent Aomine back to me,” he said quietly. “I wanted to return the favor.”

The corner of Kise’s mouth turned up. “Thanks,” he said, “but you can’t, can you. Because you might put a brave face on it but it hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts you to think about him loving me.”

Kuroko was still motionless, like he was holding all his muscles tight, and Kasamatsu blinked at him. After a long, silent moment, he nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice as tense as his muscles, “I shouldn’t let it. But.”

Kise’s smile got a little more real. “If we could help what we felt, we wouldn’t be here, would we?” He crossed to Kuroko, holding out his hands. “You once told me you couldn’t blame me for being sad,” he said quietly. “So don’t blame yourself for the same, and please—“ he swallowed, “don’t ask me to do anything that would make it worse.”

Kuroko hesitated, and then took his hands, staring up at him. Kise stared back, soft-faced and sad and so, so tired, and Kasamatsu clenched his jaw, wanting to scream at them, wanting to scream at _him_ , tell him for once in his goddamn life to stop putting everyone else’s feelings first. 

He opened his mouth, but Kuroko did it first, if more quietly “That’s not fair,” he said. “I’m not being fair, by feeling that way, it—it shouldn’t prevent you from doing anything.”

Kise sighed, squeezing his hands before letting go and sinking down on the couch next to him. “Aominecchi is happy without me,” he said firmly. “Everyone can tell. He’s happy with you and he’s happy with Kagami and I’m not going to insert myself into that, into some new role I don’t know how to play, not if it means hurting you. It’s not worth it.”

“Yes it _fucking_ is,” Kasamatsu growled, unable to help himself. “If it makes you happy, it’s worth Kuroko getting the hell over himself.” He glanced sideways at Kuroko. “Sorry.”

Kuroko gave him a kind of affronted look, but Momoi laughed. “I’m with your pretty captain,” she said, coming to lean against the wall next to him. “You really think it’s better that you’re the only one hurting, Ki-chan?”

“Yes,” said Kise immediately. “Absolutely.”

Kasamatsu and Kuroko shook their heads in exasperated unison and then exchanged a glance. Kise laughed at them, his eyes shifting warm and fond, and something in Kasamatsu’s chest eased.

“Kurokocchi, Momoicchi,” Kise said quietly. “I really do appreciate you coming to talk to me, but I won’t change my mind about this.” He bit his lip, looking away. “I don’t—I’m not going to avoid Aominecchi forever. I can promise you that. I just need to get my head together about it, figure out—“ he glanced sideways, his gaze flickering over Kasamatsu’s face and away again. “—what, um. What I want, who I want to be.”

Kasamatsu palm itched; he ignored it, ignored the thrumming nervousness under his skin.

“Also,” Kise continued. “I _have_ just gotten back from a weekend-long photoshoot and I’m quite tired. Please go home.” He licked his lips. “You—you can tell Aominecchi what I said or not, it’s up to you. I won’t ignore your texts anymore.”

Kuroko studied him for a long moment, and then nodded, standing up. “You are a better person than I am,” he said simply. “I don’t say it enough, but thank you. For everything.”

Kise flushed, muttering something and looking away.

“There’s something else,” Momoi said, and went to her coat, taking what looked like a magazine out of her coat pocket. While she crossed to give it to Kise, Kuroko turned to Kasamatsu. He didn’t even notice until the other boy cleared his throat. “Kasamatsu-senpai.”

Kasamatsu blinked at him. “Uh,” he said, “yeah?” Was he expecting an apology?

Kuroko stepped closer, speaking softly. “I may not return Kise’s feelings, but I do care deeply about him,” he said. “I am glad you’re in his life.”

Kasamatsu’s tongue felt suddenly thick in his mouth. “Oh,” he said. “Th-thank you.”

Kuroko nodded and stepped past him to get his coat. Momoi straightened up from her low conversation with Kise, who was staring at the magazine in his hands. “Be careful, is all,” she was saying. She squeezed his shoulder, flashed Kasamatsu an uncomfortably knowing grin, and then the two of them let themselves out.

The door closed behind them and Kise passed a hand across his eyes, his whole body slumping. Kasamatsu stood up, crossing to him. “Kise?”

Kise didn’t look at him, just licked his lips and held out the magazine. “It’s a pretty nice picture of you, senpai.”

It was some shitty gossip magazine, all neon colors and sensationalist headlines. The paparazzo had caught their profiles as Kise bent close, his fingers on Kasamatsu’s press pass, caught the way Kasamatsu had been staring up at him, color high in his cheeks. There was another picture, too, smaller and harder to make out, but their silhouettes were recognizable, as was the fact that their hands were linked.

The caption read _Kise Ryouta spends illicit weekend with male reporter at beautiful mountain resort!_ and it made Kasamatsu’s heart freeze solid in his chest. 

“Fuck,” he said, and swallowed hard. “How fucking fast does this shit happen, were, were they fucking hiding in the trees or—“

“Probably,” Kise said, his voice distant, staring at the wall. “I’m sorry.”

Kasamatsu gaped at him. “What the fuck?” he asked. “Why the hell are _you_ apologizing?”

Kise blinked, finally looking at him. “Because,” he started, “you don’t need to be drawn into—“

Kasamatsu punched him in the head. “Shut the fuck up,” he snapped. “I just had to listen to you putting off your own happiness for a couple of assholes who treat you like shit _again_ and I am not going to stand here and let you tell me that being mistaken for your lover is bad for _me_ when I might have just fucking _outed you to the press_ —“ He cut himself off, barely, before he blurted _because I can’t keep my fucking hands to myself,_ was horribly certain Kise would know, would pick it out of the air, “—and ruined your goddamn career!”

Kise rubbed the spot he’d punched. “I-it’s not so bad as all that,” he explained, smiling reassuringly, though there was still a weird distance in his eyes. “I’ve had shit like this before—not photographs, but rumors, definitely, and I’ve always dealt with it.” He licked his lips. “I’ll probably have to pay off the photographer, but that’s fine. The key is just to do it soon.” He shook his head. “Once someone talks to the people following my basketball career they’ll notice you’re not actually a reporter, and I’m not really sure if that’ll make things better or worse.”

Kasamatsu swallowed. “I—even so,” he said. “We, we shouldn’t have risked it.”

Kise stared at him, his smile fading. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “You’re probably right.”

Kasamatsu felt—awful, shaky and angry and farther away from Kise than he had in days, maybe in weeks, and he had no idea what to do. He spent a long minute just—staring at him, with Kise staring back, and then he swallowed. “I guess—I should go? In case they’re still here, I don’t want to make it worse by getting caught coming out of your place late at night, if.” He trailed off; it had been the wrong thing to say.

Kise picked up the magazine, glaring at it. “Yeah,” he said in the same dispassionate voice, and Kasamatsu clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into his palms.

“Okay,” he said at last, and turned to go.

He had his bag slung over his shoulder and his hand on the doorknob when Kise said quietly, “wait.”

Kasamatsu sagged in relief, turning to look at him. He was curled into the far end of the couch, pale and tired, but he looked up at Kasamatsu through his eyelashes. “I don’t regret it,” he said quietly. “Bringing you, it. It was worth this.”

Kasamatsu swallowed. “I don’t either,” he said. “Not—any of it.”

Kise smiled at him, soft and grateful, and Kasamatsu carried it with him all the way home.

+

His bed felt too large.

It was objectively ridiculous; he slept on a tiny goddamn futon and he couldn’t even roll over properly without slipping off the edge. But when he closed his eyes he could sense its emptiness—sense it stretching away in front of him for what felt like feet and yards of space he wasn’t occupying, space that. Someone could be.

He fell asleep with difficulty and woke too early to find a text from Kise, sent in the dead of night. It was a picture, unaccompanied: a snapshot of Kise’s hand against his sheets, palm up, his fingers curled and waiting.

Kasamatsu buried his face in his sheets, his whole body flushing hot. “Shit,” he muttered into his pillow. “ _Fuck_.”

+

Kasamatsu hated Haizaki Shogo more than anyone he’d ever met in his life.

He hated the way he played basketball—a twisted, wrenching, _wrong_ version of Kise’s mocking grace. He hated the powerlessness that followed in his wake, leaving their best players—himself included—shaky and unsure on their feet. He hated the way he spoke, the way he wrapped his mouth around Kise’s name— _Ryouta_ —like he had any right to it, hated the way every time he let it drop from his lips Kise put up another layer of wall, shifted deeper into the pool of anger and pain and fear that fueled his perseverance on the court.

But he couldn’t hate what Kise did with that fuel, because it was absolutely and utterly incredible.

The little shadows of his friends and acquaintances that he’d learned to recognize in Kise’s stance at the resort grew into real, breathing presences—Kise himself vanished from the court entirely, appearing only in quick flashes, the moments between stance and stance, between mask and mask. Kasamatsu felt like he was back in the mountains, watching Kise shift between modeling positions, only everything was blurred, aching, perpetual motion, he wasn’t on the sidelines anymore he was pushing, pushing, pushing himself to remember the strength in his own body, not let Haizaki steal his self-knowledge—not when it had take him so long to acquire it at all.

And then they won, and the machine stopped, and borne forward on a wave of disbelief and victory Kasamatsu found himself in Kise’s space, staring up at Kise-who-was-Kise again, reaching up, natural, inevitable, to draw him down and press their mouths together.

Kise didn’t resist his hands but his eyes widened, just a fraction. It was enough to send a hairline crack through the blank exhausted joy of Kasamatsu’s mind and remind him where they _were_ , how many people were watching and who some of those people were, and he stopped himself just in time, changing the gentle grip of his hands on Kise’s jaw into fingers pinching his cheeks. He shook him and shook him and Kise laughed and laughed, and that, Kasamatsu told himself firmly, was almost as good.

He let himself be pulled away by the rest of the team, hugged and high-fived and cheered his way through their journey to the locker room, then slid past it and all the way outside, staring at the night and trying to remember how to breathe.

“If you’re thinking about getting revenge on Kise, don’t bother.”

For a split second of pure confusion, Kasamatsu thought Aomine was talking to him. Revenge? He spun, but saw him nowhere; when Haizaki’s voice answered, around the corner, he slid to the edge of the wall and peered at them.

“Daiki,” Haizaki greeted, his tone just as weirdly familiar for Aomine’s name as it had been for Kise’s, but tinged with something more like respect than disgust.

None of that respect was reflected in Aomine’s reply: “If you go home quietly, I’ll let this go.”

Haizaki seemed startled for a moment, and then turned to face him. “Whatever, idiot,” he said scornfully. “I’ll do what I want.”

Aomine shifted. Kasamatsu could just see him, a shape against the dark. If he thought Aomine had been intimidating when talking to _him_ it was nothing to the stance he took now, his voice low but so filled with threat it made Kasamatsu shiver. “If we’re playing basketball, I don’t care what you do,” he said. “But don’t mess with them by doing stupid shit off the court.”

Haizaki started to taunt him, but Aomine cut him off, his voice harsher. “You lost to Kise, Haizaki. You have no idea how much he and Tetsu have trained. Don’t do anything else stupid.”

Kasamatsu swallowed hard to hear him put them in the same sentence so casually, in the same protective space without hesitation. _You don’t know what he wants to say_ , Kuroko had said, and the true ramifications of that sunk sick and heavy in Kasamatsu’s stomach.

Haizaki was stupider than he looked, because he must have seen that true protectiveness, the seriousness in Aomine’s face—couldn’t possibly have missed it—but he still rose to it, still threatened them, and then he was rushing Aomine and Aomine moved so swiftly and so powerfully Kasamatsu barely understood what was happening until Haizaki was sprawled on the ground, downed with a single strike of Aomine’s fist to his jaw.

Aomine stared at him, and Kasamatsu stared at Aomine. Then he turned and slipped back inside.

Kise was alone in the locker room, like he often was—he liked to take the minutes after a game to sit and think and stretch, a calm place reached only through true physical excellence. He looked up when Kasamatsu slid in. “Senpai,” he said, relieved. “There you are.”

“Haizaki was looking for you,” Kasamatsu said, staring at the floor, and Kise was on his feet immediately, crossing to him in a second and taking him by the shoulders. 

Kasamatsu blinked in surprise, looking up at him.

Kise’s eyes were concerned, searching his face intently. “Did he hurt you?”

Kasamatsu flushed, shaking his head. “Didn’t even see me. Aomine showed up,” he said. “He warned him away from you, and when Haizaki refused to give up, Aomine knocked him out. It was—pretty cool, honestly.”

Kise looked startled, and then smiled, a little tender thing that made Kasamatsu’s heart clench in his chest and it wasn’t even _meant_ for him. “Oh,” he said, small and wondering.

Kasamatsu took a breath and tried not to feel so much like he was about to cry. “He—he really cares about you, Kise,” he said. “He told me so himself, and this just makes it clearer, and you said you wouldn’t ignore him forever, maybe if you went and talked to him—“

“Kasamacchi,” Kise interrupted, voice light, and Kasamatsu couldn’t find the voice to correct him, not with the slow trail of his fingers up his neck to cup his jaw. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

His eyes were warm and his palm was warm and Kasamatsu couldn’t stand it, was leaning up and in before he could stop himself. Kise’s lip were so _fucking_ soft, parting a little in surprise against his own, and it took all the self-control he had not to part them further with his tongue. He kept it chaste, though; kept it meaningful and sincere and undemanding. Kise’s hand twitched against his jaw and Kasamatsu pulled back again, knew he was bright red and boiling hot.

Kise was staring at him, frozen, eyes wide, and Kasamatsu swallowed hard. “I just—wanted you to know. Before you talked to him.”

“Before he talked to who?” Aomine drawled from the doorway, and Kise shuddered like he was surfacing, like he was waking up. 

He looked from Kasamatsu to Aomine and back, his face desperate. “Senpai—“

Kasamatsu took hold of his wrist, removing his hand from his jaw firmly. “Later,” he said, and let him go, slipping out the door past Aomine without looking at him, without looking back at all, without doing anything but focusing on keeping his legs moving and his eyes dry.

He made it outside and lay down in the grass, his heart so loud it shook his entire body in a great wracking drumbeat, pushing thoughts out of his head, leaving him blank and terrified and somehow—calm, too, a torturous, impossible kind of calm but calm nonetheless because—he’d _done_ it, at last, didn’t have to keep stopping himself from doing it, and that was a little bit amazing.

He thought—he thought maybe Kise would ignore his _later ___and come out after him immediately, but he didn’t, and he tried not to take that as a decision in itself.

He closed his eyes.

He had no idea how much time passed before he heard soft footsteps approaching. He cracked his eyelids, suddenly on edge, because. Maybe it was Kise but maybe it was Haizaki coming back and. 

And it _was_ Kise, and that didn’t really make him feel any better. 

He swallowed, searched for something to say, and as usual came out with the wrong thing: “Come to say goodbye before you join your weird foursome?”

Kise flopped down next to him. He’d been crying—Kasamatsu could see the redness of his eyes, the darkness of his lashes. “I’m not joining anything.”

Kasamatsu turned to stare at him. He was leaning back against the hill, staring at the sky. “Y-you’re not?” He frowned. “You didn’t say no because of Kuroko, did you? Because—“

“I didn’t do it for Kurokocchi.” Kise shook his head. “I thought it would—change more,” he said quietly. “It—god.” He laughed a little, and his voice was thick. “It changes _something_ , obviously, to know that Aominecchi feels anything for me but,” he licked his lips, “him not caring wasn’t what was preventing me from being with him, and I—I think neither was the fear of hurting anyone else, I don’t know, maybe that’s obvious? Plus like. At least half the reason he came to me today was because he was so frustrated with Kagami.” 

He took a long breath and let himself sink backward until he was lying flat on the ground. “A dream came true today,” he said. “Aominecchi kissed me, told me that what I felt wasn’t one-sided. A dream came true, and you know what I thought?”

Kasamatsu shook his head, dumb, didn’t even think Kise could see him. It didn’t seem to matter.

“I thought— _no, you don’t get to have this too_.” Kise ran his hands over his face and up into his hair. “It’s too late.”

Kasamatsu swallowed against a throat painfully dry. “Kise.”

“It’s too late,” Kise said again. “It’s too late and it’s too little, and he has Kuroko and he has Kagami and he doesn’t get to have me as well, not as—last priority, not as _afterthought_ , I deserve better.” His hands were fisted tight in his hair and he flicked his eyes sideways to Kasamatsu’s. “You—you taught me that, senpai.”

Kasamatsu bit his lip, hard, wordless; blinked rapidly as Kise sat up, turning to face him. “You kissed me,” he said simply.

Kasamatsu flushed. “You just noticed?”

Kise’s eyes warmed in amusement, but the set of his mouth was nervous. He took a breath. “Do it again?”

Kasamatsu glared at him. “Why? So you can compare? Aomine’s had a lot more practice, you’re just gonna be disap—“

Kise leaned forward and cut him off with his mouth.

Kasamatsu’s breath died in his throat. It was slow and unsure and suddenly Kasamatsu realized that Kise was probably just as inexperienced at this as him, that maybe the quick kiss he’d given him in the locker room had been Kise’s _first_ , and that thought made his stomach twist in simultaneous guilt and terrible satisfaction, having that small point against all of Kise’s great loves. 

Kise shifted the angle of his head and Kasamatsu took a sharp breath in through his nose, leaning forward, pressing in harder with his lips. Kise, already half-collapsed, fell further backward, wrapping his arms around Kasamatsu’s shoulders to pull him down, too, til he was on his hands and knees in the grass, leaning down over Kise and kissing, still kissing him, sloppy heated presses of mouth against mouth. Kise made a little sound against him and that, of all things, made Kasamatsu wake up.

He pulled back—couldn’t quite convince himself to go far, to push at all against Kise’s arms around him, but he _did_ pull back. “Kise,” he said, and it came out shakier, more breathless than he meant. “Kise,” he said again, firmer, and Kise let his arms drop, opening his eyes to smile up at him, his chest rising and falling with a matching breathlessness. “Mm?”

Kasamatsu licked his lips, tripped up by the sight of Kise’s eyes dropping to his mouth, could get lost in the echo as Kise tongue mirrored his. “We. We’re outside.”

Kise’s eyes went wide, and he sat up so quickly he almost smashed his head into Kasamatsu’s. Kasamatsu rolled away at the last minute. “Watch it, idiot,” he snapped automatically.

Kise ran a hand over his face, ignoring him. “Fuck,” he said, and then, “thanks. I’m. Really goddamn tired, or I wouldn’t—“

“Yeah,” said Kasamatsu, drawing his knees up to his chest.

Kise hit him in the arm with the back of his hand. “ _No_ ,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done anything _until we were inside,_ okay?” He put a hand on each of Kasamatsu’s shoulders, turning him so he was forced to look at his face—beautiful and sincere and red-lipped with Kasamatsu’s kisses. “Okay?” he said again.

Kasamatsu nodded, a little numbly, and Kise ghosted his knuckles up his jaw. “God,” he said, soft and wondering. “God.”

Kasamatsu frowned at him more out of habit than annoyance. “What?”

Kise shook his head and dropped his hand. “I think,” he said carefully, “that we should go, or I’m going to keep kissing you.”

“Oh,” said Kasamatsu, feeling himself go red right down to his toes. “Right.” He pushed himself to his feet and pulled Kise up after him.

Kise didn’t let go of his hand, just—staying still for a long moment. When Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows at him, he said abruptly, “Come home with me?”

Kasamatsu swallowed. He wanted to—wanting _nothing_ like he wanted to, wanted to share the train ride in the kind of silence he thought they’d left behind in the mountains, wanted to walk Kise backward into his beautiful lonely space and never stop kissing him, wanted to peel him from his clothes and show him how incredible he thought he was, wanted to sleep beside him with no walls up at all—but. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said gently.

Kise dropped his eyes, and then, slower, his hand. “Oh,” he said.

Kasamatsu kicked him in the ankle to get him to look up. “I need this to be real,” he said.

Kise blinked at him. “What?”

“I need this to be real,” Kasamatsu said again, hating himself for the slump in Kise’s shoulders, “not—not a reaction to what happened today. Not a celebration because you’re free of Haizaki and not a ricochet off your rejection of Aomine, I need it to be y-you and me.”

“It would be,” Kise insisted, but there was both uncertainty and understanding in his eyes.

Kasamatsu nodded to that, not to his words. 

Kise took a long breath. “Then,” he said, “I guess—I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Kasamatsu nodded again.

They spent another long moment just—staring at each other, Kasamatsu trying to memorize the look on Kise’s face, longing and wondering and amazed and wanting, just in case he never got to see it again, in case Kise woke up in the morning having changed his mind about everything. Kise ran his thumb over his own lower lip and Kasamatsu shivered and then scowled, shaking himself free of his trance. “Tomorrow,” he said, and, with a tangible, physical effort, walked away.

\+ 

Kise found him at lunch the next day, tucked into his habitual corner of the roof. Usually Kise ate with a shifting roster of female classmates and his teammates, keeping up his social ties. He was friends with everyone, although over the last few months it had become clear to Kasamatsu just how surface-level most of those friendships were. He rarely spoke about them—most of his idle gossip revolved around their mutual friends and the other members of the Generation of Miracles, and sometimes Kasamatsu wondered whether he would really ever understand the strange, competitive, almost hostile bond he shared with them—fiercely _something_ , although whether it was loyal or loving or antagonistic seemed to change from day to day.

He raised an eyebrow as Kise approached alone, although he saw several girls in the distance, chatting and trying not to look like they were watching him. When Kise was close enough he said quietly, teasingly, “don’t you have a reputation as a sleazy heterosexual to protect?”

Kise licked his lips and, oh, this was going to be more of a problem than Kasamatsu had anticipated. “I, um,” said Kise as he sat down, “I think I might be giving that up, actually.”

Kasamatsu stared at him, stunned. “Really?”

Kise stared up at the sky, perched like a sunlit bird on the edge of the roof. “Yeah,” he said. “There will always be people like Haizaki, but yesterday made me realized I don’t have to face them alone.”

Kasamatsu slid his hand sideways so it was pressed pinky-to-pinky with Kise’s. “No,” he said. “You don’t.”

Kise didn’t look at him, but his lips curled, a little. “Plus,” he said, gold eyes filling with reflected blue, “I was thinking about—being needed, being what people need, and I think I’ve been doing it wrong.”

“How so?” Kasamatsu asked.

Kise wrinkled his nose. “I’ve been trying to be a specific person that a specific person needs, trying to become something new, instead of—thinking about who I am, and thinking about who might need that?” He took a breath. “I’m a successful model and a successful athlete, and I’m gay.” He looked sideways at Kasamatsu. “I think that’s something that some people might need very much. It was something I needed, once upon a time.” He laughed a little. “In that sense I guess I took your advice—I _am_ being who I need to be.”

Kasamatsu felt like his ribs might split open with the unfurling of his heart. “God, Kise,” he said. “You—“ he shook his head wordlessly.

Kise cocked his head at him. “Senpai?”

Kasamatsu closed his eyes. “I’m going to either kiss you or shove you off this roof in a minute, so we should probably move away from the edge.”

Kise laughed, then stood up and offered him a hand. Kasamatsu took it, and Kise pulled him to his feet. He ached all over from yesterday’s game, shaky on his feet, and when he stumbled a little Kise caught him, pressing a quick, hard kiss to his temple as they jostled together. “Besides,” he murmured against Kasamatsu’s ear, “maybe I have someone I want to show off.”

Kasamatsu’s blush rippled outward from the skin under Kise’s mouth and he stepped away so as not to do anything stupid, because Kise thinking about maybe coming out was totally different than Kise being okay with him kissing him all over his fucking face in the middle of lunch period at school while everyone watched. He pressed his hands against his stupid cheeks; bad enough he’d turned crimson from just stumbling into him. “Can’t imagine why,” he muttered, more to have something to say than with any feeling behind it.

Kise grabbed his hand as he turned away, and then—lightning-quick—shifted the grip to his wrist. Kasamatsu turned to him in surprise.

Kise was frowning at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kasamatsu blinked at him, and then sighed, tugging his wrist from Kise’s grip—an apology, not a rejection. “It’s okay,” he said, “I wasn’t fishing for compliments, I know I’m not ugly or anything, it’s just, like.” He made a face. “Aomine’s hot as hell and when you can convince yourself to actually look at Kuroko he’s pretty striking, but me? You have to admit it’s a little mismatched.”

“No I don’t,” Kise said. He stared at the ground for a long minute. “I’ll be right back,” he said abruptly, and then he left.

Kasamatsu stared after him, utterly baffled.

As the lunch bell rang, he received a text:

_i wasn’t about to let that stand but i didn’t want to be overheard, so we have to do it this way._

He blinked, walking to class, started typing out _I told you, I wasn’t fishing_ —but Kise’s faster at texting than he is:

_i think I had a heart attack the first time you smiled at me_

Kasamatsu sank down in his seat, staring at his phone. He erased his protesting text.

_you frown so much, and don’t get me wrong your frown is adorable, but. senpai. if you smiled at everyone the way you sometimes smile at me i never would have had a chance get close to you, you’d be too surrounded by admirers._

Kasamatsu rolled his eyes. _Kise._

Kise ignored him. _they already exist, you know. you probably think every time there are girls looking at us and whispering they’re talking about me, but they’re not._

Kasamatsu privately doubted that, but he didn’t interrupt again—kept his phone on silent and balanced on his knee under his desk because there was no way he was going to end this for any stupid reason like class.

_i might be pretty but i’m not hot the way you are. I pushed myself to build muscle but my body’s not an athlete’s body, not like yours. not tight, compact muscle on a strong frame. your shoulders, senpai, could drive a boy wild._

Kasamatsu raised a hand to touch his shoulder, scowling, had decided Kise was full of shit when he received another text: _nearly did, when we were at the resort. no one should be that kind and that shirtless with shoulders that good._

Kasamatsu swallowed. Kise had—wanted him, at the resort? He could have—

_do you have any idea how hard it was to sleep next to you and not touch?_

The stupidity of that question could not go unanswered, and he typed out _YES, IDIOT_ one-handed, as subtly as he could.

It wasn’t subtle enough, and he glanced up to find his teacher watching him, shaking her head. He swallowed hard and dropped his phone into his bag. Cutting that conversation short made his heart flip over in his chest but not doing so meant risking the confiscation of his phone and the possibility that someone might _read_ it, and that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. Not for himself, and definitely not for Kise.

The rest of the class period passed slower than any of Kasamatsu’s life, and when he finally fought his way out of the classroom and flipped open his phone he had ten new texts. 

Kise had detailed his appreciation for Kasamatu’s jaw, for the callouses on his hands, for the curve of his stomach below his ribs, for the color he turned when he blushed. He’d mentioned the way Kasamatsu looked when he was serious, the “dark focus” in his eyes, and then contrasted that with how cute (“ _CUTE!! CUTE, senpai!!_ ”) he looked in glasses.

Kasamatsu sank down against the wall and put a hand over his face. This certainly was an interesting way to die.

When his phone lit up again with a casual _also i’m pretty sure your ass is perfect,_ Kasamatsu muttered, “fuck this,” and called him.

“Did you skip class to send me compliments?” he demanded when Kise picked up.

“Hello,” Kise said happily, “and yes.”

Kasamatsu floundered. He hadn’t really had a plan, here, except wanting to hear Kise’s voice. “Well,” he said, “I—don’t do it again. Also, um. Thanks.” He bit his lip, overwhelmed, filled up to the brim with embarrassment and disbelief and weird, impossible happiness. “Kise—they have no _fucking_ clue what they’re missing,” he said softly.

Kise was silent for a minute, and Kasamatsu stared at his knees, his heart sinking. Had he fucked it up, messed up the happy, playful mood Kise had been in—he wanted, he’d just wanted to. Make it clear how much this _meant_ , what a good—his brain filled in, and then very carefully backed away from, ‘boyfriend’—Kise was, just. How good he was, how much he deserved to be loved and to, to be able to love freely—

“Senpai,” Kise said at last, “I need you to come kiss me now.”

“Okay,” said Kasamatsu immediately, his heart picking up in his chest. “Um. Yes. Where?”

“Well I was assuming the mouth, but I’m not going to complain if you get creative,” Kise teased.

“I’m punching you,” Kasamatsu said flatly, ignoring the way his mouth went immediately dry. “That’s what I want you to imagine right now, I’m punching you several times for how lame that was.”

“That’s not what I’m imagining,” Kise said in the same low tone, and then he laughed.

Kasamatsu found him in the second floor bathroom, crowded him backward into a stall immediately. Kise’s hands were in his hair, tugging him in, and he cradled the perfect curve of Kise’s jaw as they kissed. Kise opened his mouth for him and Kasamatsu tried to breathe right, his whole body flashing hot as Kise’s tongue slid against his. Kise kept making little shivery pleased noises and the bell rang too-loud outside and Kasamatsu pulled back enough to mutter, “ _fuck_ ,” and Kise’s palm was curled around the back of his neck, keeping him close. 

“Don’t go,” he said quietly.

Kasamatsu kissed him again, hard. “If we miss too much class they won’t let us go to practice.” 

Kise hooked two fingers through his belt loop, pouting. “I just spent a whole class period thinking—“ he slid his other palm up Kasamatsu’s chest and over his shoulders, “—about how much I want to touch you.” He raised his eyes to Kasamatsu’s, his pupils wide, dark in their rings of gold. “Don’t do this to me, senpai.”

Kasamatsu swayed into him, letting his eyelids flutter shut as Kise pressed open-mouthed kisses against his jaw. “Kise,” he said warningly, because—because he should go to class. He’d meant what he said last night and he still didn’t think—he didn’t think Kise was thinking clearly, didn’t think that is what he would want if he were.

(Didn’t think that _he_ was what he would want if he were, despite all the texts, despite the perfect, insistent warmth of his mouth.)

“Kise,” he said again, firmer, and Kise stopped.

Kasamatsu stepped back from him. “Sorry,” he said, staring at the floor between them. “I just—“

“Too fast,” Kise filled in, and when Kasamatsu glanced up at him he looked—disappointed, and a little worried, but he was covering it all up with understanding. “I get it, senpai.”

Kasamatsu stepped back into his space and took his head in both hands. He licked into his mouth, keeping him still when Kise twitched in surprise, sucked his lower lip in between his teeth and tugged at it, hard, when he let him go. Kise had his eyes closed and he swayed forward, his lips parted in the wake of Kasamatsu’ tongue, and Kasamatsu cleared his throat as he stepped back. “I do—want,” he said, “I just can’t, yet. Not and be sure.” _Not and have you be sure._

Kise opened his eyes. “So instead you’re going to _murder_ me by kissing me like that and then leaving,” he said, but it was all dramatics—Kasamatsu thought he saw what might even be relief, in Kise’s eyes, and that played into another reason it was a good idea to walk away. 

“Go on,” Kise continued, waving him away. “Let me take care of this.” He gestured at himself. When Kasamatsu stared at him, uncomprehending, he raised his eyebrows. “Unless you want to watch.”

Kasamatsu took a breath, getting it, and that—that was much too hot to think about when he was about to walk to class, or he’d have the same problem Kise did. “I—um—s-some other time?”

Kise stared at him, going slowly red.

“You were joking,” Kasamatsu said, too loudly. “Probably, right, you were—“

“No,” Kise said, cutting him off, “or—I—you want to?”

Kasamatsu swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Oh,” said Kise, “ _fuck_.” He bit his lip, and Kasamatsu needed to leave _right now_ or he never would.

“I’m going,” he said quickly, “I’m—we’ll talk later.”

He let himself out, tried desperately not to think about the throaty breathlessness of Kise’s “yeah,” behind him.

+

The next day was Wednesday.

He debated internally throughout all his morning classes whether or not he should tell Kise not to come over. He saw him briefly at lunch, but mostly in passing—Kise was surrounded by fans, and Kasamatsu wondered if it were intentional, if he were trying to give Kasamatsu space.

He appreciated it. He did, and if he was particularly irritable during his afternoon classes it was probably because he’d slept so badly and had nothing at all to do with the complete silence of his phone.

He ended up saying nothing at all to Kise. If he came over, they would deal with it—he would try and keep it a normal strategy meeting, just another Wednesday afternoon, or. Or send him away after they’d traded some kisses because he could let himself have _something_ , after all.

He sank down on his couch to wait.

Kise didn’t come. Kasamatsu spent about half an hour trying to convince himself that was a good thing before he packed up his notes and his glasses and took the train to his apartment.

Kise looked surprised and pleased to see him, but also a little concerned. “Senpai,” he said. “You’re not mad I didn’t come over, right, I didn’t want to pressure you—“

Kasamatsu shook his head, stepping past him into the apartment. “I’m not mad,” he said.

Kise closed the door. “I hope you don’t think I’ve been avoiding you,” he continued, “I just, I was thinking about what you said and I don’t want you to feel like I’m rushing you into something you’re not sure about—“

“Kise,” Kasamatsu cut him off. “I’m not mad, it’s okay.” He frowned. “And you think I’ve slowed this down for me?”

Kise blinked at him, surprised. “Yes?” he said. “I’ve been all over you and you’re pulling away, of course it’s for you—“ he stopped, seeing Kasamatsu shake his head.

“I’m doing it for you,” he said. “Kise, you’ve just had a really dramatic few days. You rejected someone you’re in love with and you faced down an old enemy and I worry that—I worry you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Kise’s face went a little cold. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I know what I’m _feeling_ , remember? That’s what I’m all about.” He shook his head. “This isn’t about any of that, it’s about you.”

Kasamatsu licked his lips, knowing he was on dangerous ground but unable, quite, to believe him. “That’s not the only reason,” he said.

Kise raised his eyebrows at him, waiting. 

“I don’t want you to ever think,” Kasamatsu began, “that—that I’m like Aomine.” He took a breath. “Like you thought Aomine was. Wanting you for sex and that’s it.”

To his utter bewilderment, Kise _laughed_ at him, shocked back to the joyfulness that had been lurking under his skin for days. “Senpai,” he said when he could speak again, “before yesterday I didn’t think you wanted sex at _all_.”

Kasamatsu scowled at him. “What?”

Kise wandered past him to lounge on the couch. “I even said as much to Aomine, that we had something in common, figuring out how to deal with our feelings towards people who weren’t interested in sex.”

“Y-you—“ Kasamatsu’s voice cracked as it came out. “You told Aomine you had feelings for me?”

“He did kind of walk in on us kissing,” Kise reminded him.

“But,” said Kasamatsu slowly. That wasn’t something you said about a friend who’d only just kissed you, about someone who you hadn’t thought about in that context before, about. A new possibility. _Figuring out how to deal with our feelings_ , like he’d already been doing so, like he and Aomine could compare notes about tricks and tactics that he’d already been using—“Kise,” he said, “when—when Kuroko and Momoi were here, you said that they weren’t what you were expecting when you got home.”

Kise went a little red. “Yeah,” he said.

Kasamatsu drifted over to him. “What were you expecting?”

Kise grimaced. “ _Expecting_ isn’t really the right word, sounds so.” He shook his head, not really looking at Kasamatsu. “I was going to get back here, and then I was going to kiss you,” he said simply. “And then. Well, we’d see, I guess.”

There’s a roaring in Kasamatsu’s ears. “You wanted to kiss me. Before—before I kissed you, before you turned Aomine down—“

Kise looked up at him, puzzled. “You didn’t know? I basically said so in those texts—“

Kasamatsu shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said defensively, “maybe you were retroactively—“

“That’s why you can’t believe this is about you?” Kise asked, realization dawning. “You think it had never occurred to me to be interested in you until you made a move? Oh, _Kasamacchi._ ”

Kasamatsu tried to knee him in the knee for the laughing sympathy in his voice, succeeded only in nudging his legs apart so he could stand between them. “Don’t fucking call me that,” he muttered, dazed and too-happy, the kind of happy where nothing had quite landed, yet.

Kise reached up to pull him down. Kasamatsu couldn’t even think about resisting. “I,” said Kise against his mouth, “have been wanting to do this for a long time.”

He kissed Kasamatsu slowly and thoroughly, and for the first time Kasamatsu let himself—fall into it, let himself believe that Kise was kissing him because he really, truly _wanted_ to, and it made him sway, a little, on his feet. He ghosted his fingertips up Kise’s throat to his jaw and Kise made a little pleased humming sound deep in his throat. Kasamatsu shifted his mouth over his cheekbone and down his jaw to feel it vibrate against his lips, worked his way down to the joint of Kise’s shoulder and neck. He suddenly remembered the cut of that stupid sweater Kise had worn after he’d changed out of his suit, the way it bared his collarbones—remembered the suit itself and Kise slipping out of it, remembered how very badly he’d wanted to slip to his knees and stop Kise putting on those tight jeans, seal his mouth to the hollow of his hips.

He licked his way to Kise’s ear, his cheeks burning, but—Kise had done this for him, and maybe it was time to return the favor. “You have the best hips I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, and Kise went still against him. “Your body—your collarbones, the curve of your spine, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I watched you change out of that suit you wore to that date with Saki.” 

He swallowed. One of Kise’s hands came up to card through his hair, encouraging, though he barely seemed to be breathing. “I,” started Kasamatsu, and then challenged himself not to chicken out. “I wanted to suck you off right there,” he finished, and Kise’s hand spasmed in his hair. “Just—go to my knees for you,” and Kise was tugging him up and around so they were kissing again, Kise kissing him quick and filthy, hard presses of mouth and slick flickers of tongue that left Kasamatsu gasping and light-headed, his hands fisting in Kise’s shirt.

“Off,” Kise said shortly, and it took Kasamatsu a minute to realize he meant his shirt. He flushed and pulled back enough to tug it over his head, remembering at the last minute to do so slowly, teasingly, to roll his shoulders and notice the way Kise ran his eyes over his skin. Kise went wide-eyed and then he smirked, half amazed and half proud. “You’re learning, senpai.”

Kasamatsu shook his head. “Don’t—don’t call me that when we’re doing this.”

Kise raised an eyebrow at him, and Kasamatsu, because he could, ran his fingertips over it. Kise squinted at him, puzzled and amused. “Why?”

Kasamatsu shrugged, a little. “I don’t know, it feels—weird, to have you be so respectful, puts us. On different levels.”

“You don’t want me to respect you?” Kise asked teasingly, but he got it, Kasamatsu could see it in his eyes. He leaned forward to slide his hands over Kasamatsu’s shoulders, pulling him in and close. “But you already said you don’t want me calling you Kasamacchi, either,” he pointed out, his nails sliding down the curve of Kasamatsu’s spine.

Kasamatsu pressed himself further into Kise’s space, his own hands slipping up under Kise’s shirt, exploring, both of them exploring, wondering at their access to all this new skin. “It’s not that I mind it,” he said truthfully, “it’s just—it’s not really my name.”

Kise nudged up under his chin to press kisses to his throat. “You want me to call you by name,” he said, sounding intrigued. “Yukio,” he breathed to the corner of Kasamatsu’s jaw, and then, more playfully, “Yukiocchi.”

Kasamatsu twitched against him, his knees going weak. “Oh,” he said.

Kise nodded into the crook of his neck. “Oh,” he agreed. He pressed a kiss to Kasamatsu’s too-hot skin. “Now I get it, why Aomine always calls Kuroko ‘Tetsu’. If he reacts the way you do…”

Kasamatsu grabbed his ear and tugged it. “Don’t think about Kuroko,” he said testily.

Kise’s eyelashes swept against the skin below his ear. “Trust me,” he said, his hands sliding down to cup Kasamatsu’s ass through his jeans, “I’m not.”

Kasamatsu wasn’t sure he believed him but he couldn’t quite make that matter, not when Kise’s hands were pulling him closer, wrapping around his hips and tugging him up and in. He took a moment to rearrange his legs so he had his knees on the couch on either side of Kise’s, then sank down into Kise’s lap. Immediately he felt the press of Kise’s erection against his ass and, awkwardly, heart in his mouth, he rocked down into him. 

Kise bit at his shoulder, maybe in surprise, maybe to muffle his little moan, and—Kasamatsu couldn’t have that, wasn’t about to let him be quiet, not here in his own space. He buried his hands in Kise’s hair and tugged so his head was tilted back against the couch, continuing to grind against him, trying to find a rhythm that was enough, enough friction for the need in his veins. “ _Senpai_ ,” Kise hissed, and then, “sorry—“

Kasamatsu shook his head. “I’ve decided it’s kind of hot,” he said, because it was, and leaned down to kiss him. It was sloppy—Kise kept cursing into his mouth and he kept losing focus on the kissing to try and move his hips differently—but it was so _good_ , Kasamatsu had never thought kissing could _be_ so good, hadn’t really thought about kissing much at all except as a way to—express love.

And. And that was still what he was doing now, pushing love into Kise’s mouth with his tongue, layering it over his skin with desperate, grasping fingertips. Kise’s hands tightened on his hips and _fuck, fuck_ , there was the friction he needed, Kise holding him and thrusting up against him and Kasamatsu carded love through the strands of Kise’s hair, breathed it harsh against his lips. He caught love between his teeth and left its marks down Kise’s throat until Kise was writhing and moaning beneath him, and when Kise went tense and trembling against him, his voice breaking over a whispered, “ _Yukiocchi_ ,” Kasamatsu could almost hear that as love, too.

He clambered shaky-legged off Kise, casting around for something to help him clean up, when Kise caught his hand. Kasamatsu looked back at him to find him languid and slick-lipped, peering puzzled at Kasamatsu through dark, heavy-lidded eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Kasamatsu shrugged, one-shouldered. “Helping you clean up?”

Kise tugged at his hand and Kasamatsu took a stumbling step back toward him. “You didn’t come,” Kise said, almost accusingly.

Kasamatsu flushed, knew it spread all the way down his chest. Kise noticed, too, his face going soft, and he tugged Kasamatsu closer again, skimming the fingers of his free hand from his shoulders to his abs, featherlight. Kasamatsu bit his lip hard, trying not to shudder into him. “It’s okay,” he insisted, “you don’t have to—“

Kise cupped him through his jeans, and Kasamatsu made a horribly embarrassing strangled kind of noise. “Stupid,” Kise said quietly. “Obviously I don’t _have_ to.” He ground the heel of his hand in slow circles against Kasamatsu’s covered dick, his eyes intent on his face. “But, god. I want to.”

Kasamatsu licked his lips. He closed his eyes, but _imagining_ Kise’s face as he languidly got him off was no better than actually seeing it, and so he opened them again, not letting his gaze settle on anything in particular—the impossible, liquid gold of Kise’s eyes, the way he kept licking his lips, too, like he wanted to taste what Kasamatsu was tasting, the flush in his cheeks from his own orgasm. The hand Kise wasn’t using to torture him was still linked with his, Kise’s thumb swiping gentle over his pulse-point even as his other hand worked Kasamatsu closer and closer to the edge.

“Y-you’re very good at multitasking,” he managed, mostly to distract himself.

Kise scowled. “Not good enough, apparently,” he said, and then sighed and took his hand away. He pulled Kasamatsu close and slid fluidly to his knees in a single motion, and Kasamatsu took a harsh, disbelieving breath. “Kise,” he said unsteadily.

Kise had both hands at his fly, undoing it and tugging Kasamatsu’s jeans down his lips a little. “Yes, senpai?” he asked absently.

“You—“ Kasamatsu started, but then Kise leaned in and pressed his open mouth against the thin fabric of his boxers and Kasamatsu nearly swallowed his goddamn tongue. Kise mouthed up the length of his dick and then licked back down it, his mouth impossibly hot and wet even through the cloth, and then he tugged down the waistband of his boxers and slipped the tip of Kasamatsu’s dick into his mouth. He raised his eyes to Kasamatsu’s and swirled his tongue and Kasamatsu came so hard his legs gave out.

Kise caught him—Kise must have caught him, because the next thing he knew he was curled boneless against Kise’s chest, sitting on the floor, propped up against the couch. Kise had picked up his hand again to link their fingers together again, and Kasamatsu gripped his fingers hard, his throat too tight to say anything at all.

“ _Now_ we can clean up,” Kise said, after a long moment where they only breathed together. 

Kasamatsu pressed his face into his chest to convey just how much he didn’t want to move, but his jeans were incredibly uncomfortable and Kise’s were probably worse. Finally he levered himself to his feet and tugged Kise up to with their joined hands. “I get first shower,” he said, rubbing his free hand over his face.

Kise’s face was amused and fond. “But of course,” he said. “As my guest _and_ my senpai.”

Kasamatsu tried to frown at him, but it was like he’d forgotten how. “Damn right,” he said mildly, and wandered into the bathroom.

+

Someone knocked on Kise’s front door while he was in the shower, and Kasamatsu hesitated a minute before answering. He opened it to find Midorima, looking strangely nervous. He frowned at him in surprise. “Ah, Midorima-kun. Can, uh. Can I help you?”

Midorima scowled, although honestly it seemed like a perpetual expression for him, and peered past him. “This is Kise’s apartment, is it not?” he asked archly. “I am here to see him.”

Kasamatsu raised his eyebrows at him, amused. “I look like I could afford this place?” he asked. “He’s in the shower. You’re welcome to come in and wait, though?”

Midorima shifted his bag against his shoulder like he was thinking. “Actually,” he said. “Perhaps you can help me, if I may ask you something personal?”

Kasamatsu ran a hand through his hair. What the hell could the star shooter of the Generation of Miracles need from _him?_ ”Uh,” he said, “sure.”

Midorima licked his lips, almost nervous. “You and Kise are dating.”

Kasamatsu’s heart picked up in his chest, and he stared at Midorima. “That doesn’t really sound like a question. He tell you that?” He didn’t get the feeling that Midorima and Kise were particularly close but they did talk, and if Kise had described them as dating—

Midorima shook his head, and Kasamatsu tried to ignore his disappointment. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Kise couldn’t overhear. “I—“ he swallowed and lowered his voice. “I don’t know what we are, okay? All I know is how I feel, and.” He shrugged. “I would like to be. He’s—well. You know.” He stumbled to a halt, feeling awkward. Midorima didn’t need to bear the brunt of his weird, too-intense feelings. Although what Midorima did need he wasn’t quite sure.

Midorima sighed. “I just want to know—how it happened. How you confessed.”

Kasamatsu felt his cheeks heat. Why the fuck did he want to know about that? Finally he muttered, “I kissed him. After the game against Haizaki.” He shook his head, feeling like—some other explanation was needed, but there wasn’t really one, not one that was any of Midorima’s business. “He was _amazing_.”

Midorima sighed again, apparently unsatisfied. “Thank you for your time.”

Kasamatsu quirked his eyebrows at him, utterly baffled. “No problem,” he said. “You okay? You sure you don’t want to wait and talk to Kise?”

Midorima shook his head. “Another time, perhaps,” he said, and started down the hall. Kasamatsu watched him go for a minute and then shrugged, starting to close the door.

“Kasamatsu,” Midorima called from the hallway, and Kasamatsu paused, looking at him. 

“Kise is an idiot,” Midorima said, his voice matter-of-fact but distantly fond, “and you should tell him how you feel.”

He left, and Kasamatsu finished closing the door, feeling—confused, and a little pissed off, because Midorima had no fucking clue what he was talking about and he was still _right_. He couldn’t let this keep going on without being totally honest, even if the idea of doing so made him want to cry with anxiety, even if it meant Kise gently rejecting him, or re-categorizing what they had into something—lesser, something just about friendship and attraction and not the great bubbling sea of love that fucking coursed through Kasamatsu’s veins every time he so much as thought about him.

“Senpai?” Kise called, coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel around his waist and drying off his hair with another. “Did I hear you talking to someone?”

“I’m in love with you,” Kasamatsu said.

Kise froze. “S-sorry?”

Kasamatsu clenched his fists at his sides. “I said I’m in love with you,” he said, biting off the words so Kise couldn’t possibly misunderstand. “And it’s okay if you don’t feel the same but I needed you to know before we went any further with this because I don’t want to lie to you about anything, ever, you’ve had enough of that shit in your life, of—of not knowing where people stand.” He raised his eyes to Kise’s face. “So. That’s. Where I do. Stand, that is.”

Kise’s eyes were wide, and he slowly lowered the towel from his head.

Kasamatsu swallowed. “If—if you want to keep doing whatever we’re doing, dating casually or, or hooking up, I think I could deal with that, I guess, I don’t think I could deal with—anything less, now. Now that I know how it feels. But if you don’t want to because you don’t—want—“ 

Kise dropped the towel from his hands and crossed to him, wrapping him up in a tight embrace. He was shaking, Kasamatsu realized, or maybe Kasamatsu himself was shaking, and he hugged Kise back hard, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek to the wild beat of his heart. 

“No one’s ever said it to me,” Kise said quietly, “so I never thought I would get to say it back.”

Kasamatsu opened his eyes, and Kise pulled back from him a little, just enough to tilt his head up with gentle fingers. “I love you, too,” he said. “Senpai—Yukiocchi—I’m in love with you, too.”

His eyes were warm and wondering and Kasamatsu’s head was filled with a ringing, disbelieving silence. “No,” he said with difficulty, “what? You are?”

Kise grinned wide at him. “I am,” he said. “I really am.”

Kasamatsu took hold of both of his hands because it was safer than looking at his face. “But,” he said, “Kuroko and Aomine—“

“And you,” Kise concluded. He turned Kasamatsu’s face upward again, inexorable, laughed at something in his expression. “What,” he said, “you were totally ready to believe I could be in love with two people, but _three_ , that’s just too much for you to handle?”

“When one of them is me, yeah,” Kasamatsu muttered truthfully. He took a breath. “Kise—“

Kise narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you going to tell me I don’t know what I’m feeling again?” he asked archly.

“I just—maybe you don’t?” It sounded weak even to himself, but the other option was just to _believe_ him, and he—couldn’t, quite. 

Kise sighed and pulled him over to the couch, sitting down with him, still holding his hands. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me this, senpai. How do you know you’re in love with me?” 

Kasamatsu scowled at him. “Because,” he said belligerently, and when Kise leveled a look at him he sighed. “At this point I just—know,” he said quietly, staring at his own knees and their joined hands on the couch between them. “I just feel it, all the fucking time, but—I first figured out what these feelings _meant_ on the train, when you were talking about how you felt about Kuroko and Aomine.” 

Kise made a little pleased noise, and Kasamatsu looked up to find him looking happy and embarrassed and smug all at once. “There you go, then,” he said triumphantly, “because I wasn’t talking about them, on the train.” 

Kasamatsu blinked at him. 

Kise gave him a gentle, almost reproachful look, like he was being particularly stupid. “I was talking about _you_." 

“Oh,” said Kasamatsu, and then, “oh,” again, and he hoped to hell Kise couldn’t hear the tears in his voice because there was no fucking reason for them to be there. Kise took a breath, maybe at his voice but maybe—maybe he was just as breathless and relieved as Kasamatsu was, and there was a weird lightness between them and Kasamatsu thought of how he’d—he’d wanted this, no walls between them. 

Kise leaned in to seal their mouths together, and Kasamatsu felt absolutely loved. 

He pulled back and for a moment had no idea what to do with his hands. He stood up, and then sat back down, and then stood up again, crossing to his bag and fetching his notes. He slid his glasses onto his nose and looked up to find Kise with his chin propped on his hand, regarding him with an expression of amused incredulity. 

“What?” he snapped, his lips twitching into a grin. 

Kise grinned helplessly back. “Just. _You_.” 

Kasamatsu crossed the room again, curling up shoulder-to-shoulder next to him on the couch. “No sense wasting time,” he said, and pressed a quick kiss to Kise’s temple. “After all, we’ve got a Winter Cup to win.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY that this took so long, this was incredibly frustrating the get right (the longer the buildup, the harder the resolution). I hope it was worth the wait, and thank you all for reading.
> 
> This is (probably!) not the last fic in this series. I have one more planned from Aomine's perspective (at last!) that will include lots of scenes you've already seen and lots of things you haven't. As planned it will be quite long, and my life is getting to a pretty busy point, so I have no estimate at all for how long it might take. Also it is much harder for me to write from inside Aomine's head than anyone else's, boy has a lot of shit going on. I love him though. God do I love him.
> 
> Anyway. Again, thank you all for accompanying me in this crazy project, and I really hope I'm able to make you feel some stuff about some people who love each other a whole lot. Thank you so much for your feedback.
> 
> This fic crosses over with the others in the series in a few places. The majority of the first chapter you can also read from Kise's perspective in [A Brother in Arms](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3306077), and (briefly) from Midorima's in [Love is a Changer.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3384527) The third chapter has another crossover scene with that fic, as well as an implied scene (Kise's conversation with Aomine) that we will see again in the upcoming Aomine fic. The conversation Aomine and Haizaki have is a crossover not with a fic at all, but with. Y'know, canon.
> 
> This show is too much for me, y'all.


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